Quiet Hill 4: Not ANOTHER Parody!
by SlapDash
Summary: Follow Henry as he blunders his way through an assortment of wacky worlds in an attempt to escape from his room, all the while disrespecting and being disrespected by everyone he meets!
1. The Room that Needed Padding

**Disclaimer:** All right, Silent Hill and all affiliated characters, concepts, and plot devices are © Konami and KCET. Bottom line – I don't claim to own Silent Hill. I only own a copy of the game. All external references are the property of their respective owners.  
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It was one year, eleven months, twenty-nine days twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes and sixty seconds ago that Henry Cityshend moved into Room 302 of South Sootfield Heights, an apartment building right smack in the side of the center of the smallish-large sized city of Sootfield, which was why it was called Sootfield Heights to begin with. Henry was happy and enjoying his new, mediocre life.

But four days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes and sixty seconds ago, something mildly out of the ordinary happened. He began to have a recurring dream each night. One other thing, albeit a negligible one…

He couldn't leave Room 302…

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He was in his bedroom, and it seemed his tastes had quickly turned to red without his awareness, for the entire room was coated in it. Even the windows were coated with what looked like tomato paste that had long since expired. Once he'd had enough of that scenery, he exited and made the long and arduous trek to his living room down the short hall.

At least, he thought it was his living room. He couldn't be sure. If it was, it must have been robbed, for a number of the accoutrements he was familiar with were missing. One thing was for sure, the burglars were rather inept, for they'd gone to the trouble of replacing what they'd stolen. But what really got to him was that they'd stolen his record player. His record player! That was like the predecessor to the CD, or something! In its place, the jerks left a broken TV, as if in mockery of his loss. And what the hell was up with that eyesore of a clock?! Now that he thought about it, those burglars were probably the ones responsible for his apartment's new red-on-red with red trim color scheme. Or perhaps that was the work of a really sloppy hazmat team.

He walked over to the door, only to see that that had been burgled as well, and in its place was a crude sketch of what had once been there. _'Picture of a door,'_ he thought as he examined it. _'I don't know who drew it, but it's certainly in bad taste…'_ He considered that notion a moment. _'Then again…'_ he thought, running his finger across the red substance that coated every square inch of his apartment. He brought it to his mouth and tasted it. "Mmm… Strawberry jam," he said. "Still tastes bad, though…" He then walked over to the wall opposite the television to see some photographs, and noted one to be of a man he wasn't familiar with. "With a face like that, I'll bet he has to sneak up on the mirror in order to shave…" he thought aloud as he regarded the unknown person in the picture before moving on to the wall by the sofa. "And _this_ one's even worse!" he said, failing to realize it was an image in the wall itself and not a photograph.

Then, he heard a wet sort of squelching noise as the lights began to flicker. "Damn cheap electric wiring," he grumbled as he turned to the lamp on the small cabinet beside the sofa. He was about to smack it onto the floor in frustration when he suddenly noticed a dark spot appeared on the wall beside him. "And why the hell are the walls bleeding sewage?!" he said as the thick, dark, viscous substance continued to coat that face on the wall. "Don't tell me they screwed up the plumbing, too!"

Suddenly, the face reappeared out of the sludge, except this time it was real. He screamed like a girl when he realized a head was actually poking out of the wall now. "KYAAAHHHHH! IT'S THE GHOST OF MR. CLEAN!" he shrieked as two hands reached out, placed themselves against the wall and began pushing, aiding the thing as it writhed in an attempt to get free. He stepped back, trying to put some distance between himself and the late Mr. Clean, but for some reason found himself unable to look away from the hideous monstrosity as it fell out of the wall and onto the floor. He stumbled backward as the thing before him staggered to its feet, its head twitching violently in a manner familiar to Silent Hill 3 veterans as it continued to advance on him. "Okay, tell you what," he said, having decided to resort to negotiation. "You take a minute to get rid of the dirt and grime and grease in this place while I run around flailing and squealing like an effeminate wuss…" He was cut off as Mr. Clean then fell on top of him, pinning him to the floor. It was then that the truth became horrifyingly apparent to him. "NOOOOO!" he wailed. "ANYTHING BUT YAOI!"

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Henry Cityshend woke up in his bedroom, completely free of fruit preserves and gay cleaning agent mascots. "Oh, man…" he groaned as he sat up in his bed. "What a dream. No more White Claudia for me." Then, by force of habit, he took the phone and dialed the superintendent's number, but the result was the same as the last four times he'd tried this. "It _still _doesn't work, dammit!" he cursed. "This is worse than Alltel!" he said as he slammed the receiver back down on the hook.

He began to walk away, but no sooner had he done so than his phone rang. He picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Help…me," a woman's voice said.

"What…?"

"Whatcha, deaf?!" the voice snapped at him. "I said, help me! This program says my computer needs a programmable vertex/pixel shader to run it, and it's bein' a bitch!"

"What are you talking about?!" Henry demanded.

"Waitaminute…this isn't tech support, is it?" Henry just gave a blank stare before responding.

"No," he said flatly.

"Dammit!" the voice swore, and the line went dead. Henry looked at the receiver and then noticed the cord was cut.

"Oh, lookit that," he said. "Always wanted a cordless." He placed the receiver back on the hook and made his way to his window.

Gazing out, he saw a Hispanic woman loitering around the subway entrance. After putting on a weird pantomime act for herself, she turned to face in his general direction to offer a stage actor's bow before leaning to the side and tap-dancing down the flight of stairs leading to the subway. Henry only had three words for the display. "What the hell?" He decided not to think about it too hard, because thinking had a tendency to make his head hurt. He just turned and exited the bedroom.

He walked down the short hall, and the first thing he did upon entering the main room was turn his attention toward the door, which was sealed by a haphazard network of chains draped over it. "Five days ago…" he said. "That's when I first had the nightmare. I haven't been able to get out of my room since then. The phone doesn't work, the TV doesn't work… I can't even get anybody to hear me when I yell." He grinned to himself. "Which means I can make all sorts of disparaging comments about them as loud as I want and not have to worry about them kicking my ass!" he said with a satisfied nod. "Anyway, where was I…? Oh, yes!" He cleared his throat before continuing. "My whole world has suddenly turned insane. Rather nice of it to join me, actually. Anyway, my door's chained up, the windows have been replaced with Plexiglas and sealed shut with Krazy Glue, and on top of that, the door's chained up from the _in_side, which would've been less awkward to mention had I done so while I had been on the subject of the door. I just felt like mentioning the windows to separate the two!" He sighed to himself. "Now that I've gotten my obligatory monologue out of the way, how am I going to get out of here?" he said as he stared at the door, as though trying to bore through it with his eyes.

Suddenly, a trace of red appeared on the door where he was staring, and it continued to expand as strawberry jam bled through and formed a sloppily scrawled out message.

_You've been Punk'd!!  
__Walter_

"What the hell…?" Henry said again. "What's goin' on here…?" He then heard something striking a hard surface outside, and he smashed his face against the door as he put his eye to the peephole. Through it he could see a pretty young lady with a grocery bag standing in the hall just outside the door. "That's Irene Calvin from next door…" he said to himself, as though directing a guided tour as the woman outside bent to retrieve a few items she'd dropped. Henry then continued to speak in a poorly-feigned Australian accent. "If oah could git eyaut of 'eeh, oah'd rahn ahp to 'er and jyam moah thamb ahp 'er bahtthole!" he said, giving the thumbs-up as an example. "Tha'd _really_ piss 'er off, and she'd prob'ly slap me with a loasuit, but not befoa slappin' me senseless!" He grinned amusedly to himself, for that had been the most entertainment he'd had in the time he'd been there since finding himself trapped in his apartment. He then noticed Irene was looking straight at his door, and for a moment, he was afraid she might've heard him. He was relieved when he realized that she was just zoning out.

"Oh, man…" she muttered as she snapped out of it. "I hope my luck changes before the party." Henry grinned again.

"She wants me," he said, his ego inflating like that Bobbie the Rabbit hot air balloon he saw outside his window in the distance on occasion. He watched as Irene then made to move on, but the bottom of the bag ripped open under all the weight of its contents, spilling everything inside onto the floor again.

"Dammit!" she cursed as she knelt down to collect the fallen foodstuffs. It was then that Henry noticed numerous multicolored handprints on the wall of the hall opposite his door, one row of eight over another row of seven. It appeared someone had been fingerpainting, and they had the gall _not_ to invite him!

Dejected again, he hung his head and noticed a scrap of paper on the floor, which he picked up and read.

_Mom,  
__Y doesn't u Wake up?_

After wondering who could possibly be stupid enough to mistake him for their mother, he discarded the note and wandered aimlessly into the small kitchenette to the right of the door, where he absently opened the refrigerator and looked inside. "Man, I have _got _to get a job!" he muttered as he regarded its interior, which was completely empty save for a bottle of white wine and another of chocolate milk. He took both and, after closing the fridge, went over to regard the storage chest beside the television. "This chest could hold a lot of stuff," he said to himself. "Hell, I know that!" he replied, feeling stupid for having stated the blatantly obvious. He then started shooting a few glances between the chest and the items in his hands, as though contemplating a decision. "Well, why the hell not?" he shrugged as he deposited the milk inside just because he felt like it. He kept the wine with him as he then went over to the bookshelf and looked behind it for no good reason.

He noticed a scrap of a book he wasn't familiar with sitting between the shelf and the wall. He took the book and sat down on the sofa, removing the cork from the wine bottle and taking a swig as he read the contents of the book scrap.

_Through the Ritual of the Holy Assumption, he built a world. It exists in a space separate from the world of our Lord. More accurately, it is within, yet without the Lord's world. I don't know what the hell that means, or how that's supposed to work, that's just the way it is. Don't question it!_

_Anyway, unlike the world of our Lord, it is a world in extreme flux. This is due to its poorly laid foundation, which is the result of the contractor having hired unqualified laborers so he could skim construction funds. Unexpected doors or walls, moving floors, odd creatures, a world only he can control… Anyone swallowed up by that world will live there for eternity, undying. This may sound like a good thing, but it's not. They will haint--_

Henry stopped reading and took a moment to consider that word. "'Haint'…?" he said.

_Yes, HAINT! Now, continuing on…_

_They will haint that realm as a spirit. How can the Lord forgive such an abomination? It violates practically every zoning law in existence, and then there's the subject of tax evasion…_

The book was damaged just as it was apparently about to get into the legalistic mumbo jumbo, but there was one last bit further on that was still legible, though not really any more understandable.

…_It is important to travel lightly in that world, it being a pixilated environment with extreme physical limitations. He who carries too heavy a burden will regret it. Don't even try, because Konami won't let you…_

The scrap ended there, which Henry was glad for, considering he found it quite boring. "Meh, this book sucks," he said, tossing it back over to the bookshelf as he took another swig of wine. "Oh well," he said as he got up and walked over to the television, "at least I've still got the tube."

He pressed the power button on the television and was greeted with a black screen. "Man, they've been showing this same show on _every_ channel for five days straight, now!" he complained. Then, he sighed in resignation. "Who the hell am I kidding?" he said, shaking his head. "The TV's been broken for five days, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it." He stood there for a moment, then dropped to his knees, tossed his hands into the air and threw his head back, releasing a cry of absolute frustration that can only be felt by a couch potato deprived of his precious television. "Why, Konami?! WHY?!" he wailed at the ceiling, which regarded him with the silent apathy of an inanimate object. Henry then instantaneously forgot his anguish as he noticed the wine bottle he was holding above his head and brought it down to take another swig of wine.

A sudden crash of shattering glass sounded from the bathroom, which startled Henry enough that he reflexively spewed the contents from his mouth and onto the TV screen in front of him. "Who could that be?" Henry wondered, regarding the noise with the same deference as he would someone knocking on the front door as he wiped his mouth. Upon investigating, he found that his mirror had fallen off the wall and was now lying shattered in the washbasin and on the floor. It was probably because the perimeter of that great, gaping Hole in the wall beside his crapper encroached into the mirror's space and knocked it off. "What…the hell…?" Henry wondered aloud as he approached the Hole and looked in. "Must be termites…" he mused. After considering the Hole's presence for a bit, he had a Retard Moment. "Ahur-hur! Wonder if I can get out this way! Dahur-hur-hur!" With that, he yanked the section of rusty pipe sticking out from the broken section of the wall and placed it in his pocket. That's right, the entire length. He has deep pockets. Then, he took another swig of wine before corking the bottle and crawling into the Hole with all the mobility of an inebriated sloth.

As he crawled along, he thought he could hear whispering voices in the tunnel. "Yeah, it's gotta be termites," he said as he crawled along. In the distance, he could see a light at the end of the tunnel. "Cool! Just like when you die!" he said. He froze in place at those words and considered the weight of what he'd just said. "Nah!" he shook his head, dismissing the thought and continuing on. The light continued to slowly grow ever brighter as he progressed until finally he reached the end of the tunnel. The last thing he remembered was his vision being completely engulfed by the light.  
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**Hell Count:** 7 (excluding nonverbal/undocumented occurrences)

**A/N:** So, what do you think? Overdone? You bet it is! Feel free to review.

The reference to pixilated environments with extreme physical limitations is the property of Hometown. Read her fic, The Reverse Will. It's hilarious.

The Super Mega Retard Moment is the property of Knick Knack. Read her comic, Chibi Silent Hill 2. It's also hilarious…most of the time.


	2. RESPECT

Henry woke up and, after looking around, found himself on a downward-bound escalator. "What the hell? What happened to the pretty light?!" he demanded, sounding as though he'd been robbed. "Aah, this sucks," he said, sitting back down on one of the steps and casting his gaze down the remaining length. The escalator was unusually long. In fact, he couldn't even see the bottom. "Should reach the bottom any minute now…" he said.

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"Any minute now…" he repeated after a couple minutes.

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"At this rate, I'll _never_ get those ten big green stars…" he muttered to himself after another couple minutes. He could've sped up the process by descending on foot, but then again, Henry wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

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"_Eighty-six bottles of wine on the wall,"_ Henry sang to himself.

"_Eighty-six bottles of wine,_

_If one of those bottles should happen to fall…"_ he paused to take another swig of wine, then started doing math on his fingers.

"_Eighty-five bottles of wine on the wall."_

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"Oh, my ass!" Henry cried, having been abruptly awoken by the escalator as it tried to eat him by the seat of his pants. After pulling his shirt tails free of where the escalator steps vanished beneath the floor, Henry began to familiarize himself with his new surroundings. A brief look around told him he was at the South Sootfield subway station, except it was looking rather abandoned. "At least I won't have to worry about muggers," Henry thought aloud as he started down the hall.

At the end of the hall in the distance, he saw the Hispanic lady from before standing with her back toward him, and judging by her revealing attire, she was likely one of those "ladies of the night" his mother warned him about. He pulled out his pipe and slowly stalked toward her with the intent of knocking her out cold and searching her for any money he could swipe. Unfortunately, she turned around just as he was about to get within striking distance, and he quickly hid the weapon behind his back.

"Who're you?" she asked him, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd just about thwacked her over the head. "What's your name?" Henry was taken aback. Something about the way the lady regarded him seemed just way too _friendly_ to him.

"Henry," he answered. "And you?" The woman gave an amused laugh.

"This is my dream, and you don't even know my name?" she said. Henry cocked a brow.

"What do I look like, a mind-reader?" he said. The woman considered that statement.

"Now that you mention it, you _would_ look cute in a spangled turban!" she said. Henry glowered at her. "Anyway, my name's Samantha," the woman said.

"And you think this is a dream?" Henry followed up.

"Yeah," Samantha replied, "and it sucks ass! Someone needs to fire the cleanup crew." Henry was still having trouble absorbing her reaction.

"A dream?" he repeated dumbly. Samantha heaved a sigh.

"You're not too bright, are you?" she said. "Anyway, I really want to get out of this dump, but I can't find the exit, despite the simplicity of the station's layout." Henry turned away and shook his head in exasperation as he buried his face in his palm. He then found himself being grabbed by the shoulder, forcibly wheeled around with great strength and speed to face Samantha, who immediately proceeded to invade his personal space. "Will you help me find it?" she said with a naughty-looking smile. "I'm all scared and stuff, being all by my solitary lonesome. I'll do a 'special favor' for you if you help me out of here…" Henry regarded her suspiciously. "Wipe that stupid look off your face," she said, taking a step back. "I'm _not_ making an indecent proposal, if that's what you're thinking! I mean, what do I look like, a _whore_?" Henry blinked.

"Yes," he replied blankly.

"Hah! You ought to see me when I'm in my corset with stockings and stiletto heels!" she replied smartly. She then clapped her hands over her mouth when she realized what she'd just said. "You didn't hear that," she followed up.

"No, I didn't," Henry agreed, trying to expel the disturbing imagery from his mind.

"Anyway," she said with an effeminate gesture, "I was just gonna let you see the tattoo I got on my ass." She gave a slap to her right buttock for emphasis.

"So you're an exhibitionist?" Henry said, beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Samantha laughed as she took the wine bottle from him.

"It's just a dream," she said before taking a swig from the bottle like an unclassy whore. "I can do all sorts of heinously stupid things and not have to worry about repercussions!" She handed the bottle back to Henry, who wiped the bottle opening thoroughly with his shirt before taking a swig himself. When he saw Samantha had started down the hall, he just shrugged and followed after her, deciding that the quicker he got the job over with, the quicker the two of them could separate. Of course, escort duty in an abandoned subway is hardly a very exciting task, so Henry began rapping to himself as they proceeded down the hall.

"_Remember way back when I was smokin' crack,_

_you were workin' the corner, sellin' that ass,_

_and I took that rusty pipe and gave your head that gash…" _Henry prodded Samantha in the back of the head with the pipe for emphasis and proceeded rapping without breaking the rhythm.

"…_then took all your cash_

_and spent it on smack?"_ he then made emphasis by swatting her backside with the pipe, to which she responded by reeling around and kneeing him right in the beanbag. "OH!" he cried out, his voice an octave higher than normal as he fell to his knees and did the cauliflower crouch. "Oh, right in the Mean Bean Machine!"

"From now on, _you_ travel in front," Samantha said, hauling him forward by his shirt collar. "You're the one who's supposed to be leading _me_, anyway." When Henry was finally able to stand up straight again, he led the way down the hall with a strange new gait.

They hadn't gone far when Samantha stopped and doubled over as she clutched her stomach. "What's _your _problem?" Henry demanded.

"I don't feel so good," Samantha groaned. "Must've been that peanut butter and fish head stew with pickles and chocolate sauce I had earlier…" Henry's head recoiled in surprise.

"Uh…you actually _ate_ that?" he said.

"Well, I was pretty tanked at the time…" she replied. She then held one hand over her mouth as she began to retch. "Hold on, will you? I'm gonna be whaling my guts out for a few minutes…"

"Thank you, drive through…" Henry said as she pushed past him and stumbled into a ladies' restroom a short distance ahead. He made his way to the wall opposite the facilities and leaned against it to wait for her. He grew impatient when she didn't return after three seconds, so he started to sing a song that suddenly popped into his head. _"Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads…" _He was interrupted by a creaking sound, and he looked to see the door of the men's restroom slowly swinging open. He was curious, yet he was also apprehensive, so he took a swig of wine to pluck up the courage to go over and look.

Suddenly, a large, rotting dog carcass was launched out of the restroom, and although Henry had only taken a swig, he spewed an entire quart of wine in his spit-take because it's funnier. "OH MY GOD, DOGGIE OF DEATH!" he screamed as the carcass came to rest in the center of the hall. Then, two other dogs, each equally as mangy and rotten as the first, came out and started sniffing their fallen comrade.

After the perfunctory dog-courtesies, they opened their mouths and allowed their long, proboscis-like tongues to loll out. Or perhaps they weren't tongues so much as their esophagi yanked inside-out. Whichever they were, both were stuck into their dead companion, and bulges began traveling up their lengths as the air was filled with an obnoxious rattling noise, like someone trying to slurp the last remains of a beverage through a drinking straw. "Hey, get away!" Henry yelled, lashing out with his pipe. "I saw it first!" He proceeded to bludgeon and stomp both of the claim-jumping dog-thingies post haste and, seizing victory, examined his prize. "Ewwwww…!" he cringed upon inspecting it more closely, holding his hand over his nose to guard against the odor of decay. "Never mind, guys. You can have it," he said to the dog-thingies he'd just killed as he stepped over to the other door.

He stood before the entrance to the ladies restroom, staring at the sign on the door. "This is it," he said, steeling himself for the journey into the unknown. "No turning back now…" Then, before he could change his mind, he burst through the door and immediately shot rapid glances in all directions to take in his surroundings. Offhand, he was rather disappointed. "That's it?" he said, slumping his shoulders. But then, he brightened up and began to grin, for he was standing in forbidden territory: the ladies' bathroom. "Man, I'm gonna brag to everyone in the apartment about this!" he said. He then realized that Samantha wasn't in there. "Where the hell did she go?! I was hopin' to negotiate for cash…" The next thing he noticed was the large Hole in the wall with the runic symbols around its perimeter. "Hey! No fair!" he complained. "Why is it the ladies' bathroom gets a _bigger_ dimensional wormhole?" After a shrug, he backed away from it and got a running start. "WHEEEE!" his voice echoed off the tunnel walls as he made a diving leap into it.

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Henry woke lying in his bed, clutching the wine bottle as though it were a teddy bear. "Must've been another dream," he said as he sat up. "Seemed pretty real to me. Or maybe I really _was_ inside that floozy's dream…?" He considered what he'd said for a minute. "Man, that's _stupid_! What the hell am I thinking?!" He took a swig of wine, left the room and headed for the living room.

Upon arriving, he noticed something was amiss. "Hmm…" he said. "Something's amiss…" Told ya. He examined the living room once…twice…thrice… He couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. "Aww, hell! I'll just pick a direction!" He shut his eyes, held out his hand, and spun around in a few circles. "That way!" he said upon stopping and headed in said direction toward where the cabinet was.

Or where the cabinet should've been. It had been moved somehow, revealing several marks in the wall where someone had apparently tried to punch their way through somehow. Beside that was a message scratched into the wall, likely with the same tool used in making the dents.

_I'm getting bummed. I can only tunnel this far! Damn high-grade construction materials! Damn quality artisanship! The hallway, the windows, the walls, the turlet… It's like the room's in another dimesion (hint-hint)! Irene never noticed…_

"Boy, now that's just pathetic," Henry said to himself. "Trying to smash through the wall to get Irene's attention? Even _I'm _not thatdesperate…" Setting the wine bottle on the cabinet, he knelt down to inspect the holes in the wall, and was surprised to find that one allowed him to see right into Irene's room. It was a typical girl's room, with dresses hanging on the wall and a closet full of clothes. He could see the bed, on which was seated not only a pink Bobbie the Rabbit plushy, but Irene herself. She was currently looking around and generally looking pissed off. Henry was about to start pounding on the wall to get her attention, but then realized that would blow his cover and decided to just watch and see if anything interesting happened.

"Where's that hellin', dammin'-ass, bitchin', damn broom, dammit?!" Irene unleashed a long string of expletives in her search for the broom. "There it is!" she said, spotting it in a corner. "Right where I left it!"

"Right where she left it?" Henry snickered. "I wish I had a video camera; this is prime blackmail material…" He was interrupted as the broom handle passed through the hole and poked him in the eye. Henry unleashed his own supercombo of expletives as he held his hand over his assaulted eye, and Irene was none the wiser, for she didn't even realize there was a hole there. When Henry put his eye back to the hole, the room was empty, its only occupant the goofy-looking plushy on the bed. "Well, show's over," he said.

He put his hand on the floor to steady himself as he stood, but was surprised to feel something else there. He looked down and noticed a pistol was lying at his feet. "Freakin' awesome!" he said as he took it up. "Wait a minute," he said, noting something not quite right about it, "this thing's suspiciously light…" Upon closer examination, he found it to have a plug dangling from a hole in the back. "A _water_ pistol?!" he shouted, outraged at having been cheated. He was about to unleash another expletive supercombo when the phone in his room started ringing. "Dammit," he muttered, absent-mindedly shoving the pistol into his pocket as he stood up, "I need to switch phone companies…" He started for the hall, but then remembered something and returned to the cabinet, retrieving his bottle of wine before heading back to his room.

Henry walked up to the nightstand and picked up the receiver. "Mmm'yes?" he answered.

"WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO, DAMMIT?!" Samantha screamed so loud, Henry had to bring the receiver away from his ear. "Hurry! Save me! There's a token here if you need it, now hurry up! He's coming…!"

"What do you mean, he's coming?" Henry asked. "Oh, I get it. You promised someone else a 'special favor,' too?" Samantha's fist flew out of the receiver's mouthpiece and struck Henry square in the jaw.

"NOW!" she roared, and the line went dead. Henry placed the receiver back in its cradle and held up his index finger.

"This looks like a job for…!" he paused for dramatic effect. "…someone else." He took a swig of wine as he headed for the door, but he had only gotten as far as the bathroom before the ensuing guilt trip compelled him to go back for Samantha. "What can I say?" he sighed. "I just can't sit by, knowing that there's a whore out there that needs rescuing…" After taking his pipe up from the floor and putting it back in his pocket, he took one last swig of wine before crawling back into the Hole.  
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**Hell Count:** 6  
**Total Hell Count:** 13

**A/N:** I forgot to mention last time, the Hell Count is the property of E.P.O., author of the original SH4 parody and a few other high-quality SH fics. Read his works, they're good stuff.


	3. No Peanut Jokes Here

When Henry woke up, he was seated by the Hole in the ladies' restroom. It took a moment for him to register that. He was seated. On the floor. Of a public restroom. "G'AH!" he cried, jumping to his feet. "There's pee-pee on the floor!" He then noticed the cubicle beside him was occupied. "WAAAHHH!" he shrieked, flinching away from it.

When he found himself not being beaten senseless with a handbag after a few seconds, he looked to see that the figure in the cubicle was just a mannequin that bore a striking resemblance to Samantha, its face frozen in the midst of a Super Mega Retard Moment. "Amazing resemblance," he said as he examined it, "right down to the fact that it's a dummy." He saw its hand was smeared with a red substance and holding out a token in the upturned palm. It took a moment, but Henry eventually put two and two together and understood what Samantha had meant when she called him on the phone. "Oh, I get it," he said as he took up the token and examined it. It had lipstick on it that had apparently been transferred from a pair of puckered lips. "Must be a token of her affection, or something…" he said as he pocketed the token. He turned to leave, but then turned back to face the mannequin and ran his finger across the red substance on its hand. "Mmm!" he said as he tasted the substance. "Strawberry jam! And it actually tastes good this time!" After licking his fingertip clean, he exited the bathroom.

He proceeded down the hall and made his way to the turnstiles. He thought he'd be able to get through without any hassle since he had a token, but he was wrong. It seems that, in his stupidity, he allowed the turnstile to give him the runaround for a few revolutions before throwing him down the stairs like a bouncer giving a destitute drunk the bum rush. Henry now laid there, a battered, dizzied man on the floor at the foot of the stairs. Fortunately, his bottle of wine was still intact, and he took a swig to dull the pain as he staggered to his feet.

No sooner was he upright again than he was suddenly struck with an incredible headache. "Aww, hell!" he groaned, holding his hand to his head. "I can't be hung over already!" Unfortunately, he was right. On the wall directly in front of him, a familiar black sludge began to bleed from the wall, and from it emerged a familiar-looking bald spook. "NOOO!" Henry yelled. "NOT MR. CLEAN AGAIN!"

"No," the ghost said genially as it floated over to him, "just your friendly traveling salesman!" To Henry, this was even worse, and his headache intensified at the fact that, even in a different world, salespeople just staunchly refused to stop haranguing him. "Now," the ghost said as it hovered over the writhing Henry, "could I interest you in--?"

"I AIN'T BUYIN' NOTHIN' FROM NOBODY, SEE?!" Henry shouted at the top of his lungs as he beat the nuisance back with his steel pipe, then ran the rest of the way down the stairs to the Hang Street Line boarding platform, where he saw two trains stalled on the tracks, and Samantha trapped inside one of them.

"Get me out!" she screamed as she pounded on the door. "This isn't my train! I don't wanna go to Pleasant River!"

"Wait here!" Henry said. "And if you see a floating guy come along, hold him off for me!"

"Henry! Get back here!" she shouted as he took off down the platform. "Don't make me kick your ass!" But Henry was too far away to hear as he dashed toward the other end of the train. It wasn't long before he came to the foremost compartment, which housed the driver's cabin.

He entered, but just stood there for a moment, looking around. "Now, what did I come here for?" he asked himself. Then, he saw the control panel, where he saw a large, red button with the words "DO NOT PRESS!" printed on it. He grinned as he approached it and gleefully began rubbing his hands together. "Once I press this bee-_yoo_-tee-ful red button, this jolly, candy-like button…" He was interrupted as Samantha's voice crackled over the intercom.

"Push the BUTTON, Henry!" she shouted. Henry just shrugged and followed through with pressing the button.

**DING-DONG!**

A doorbell rang, and all the doors on the train opened as if by some automated system triggered by the press of a button. Henry stepped back out and noticed Samantha running toward him at an incredible speed for someone wearing those blocky, high-heeled sandals. Immediately upon getting within range, she started pounding on him with her fists. "Why did you leave me, dammit?!" she yelled as she continued to hit him. "There's a thingy following me!" Henry looked past her to see the salesman ghost lazily floating along in their general direction with a huge-ass knife in hand, all the while incessantly rambling on with his sales pitch.

"Could I possibly interest you in this fine execution tool?!" he offered as the blade of the knife scraped against the ground, slowing his floating speed considerably as he dragged the heavy weapon along behind him.

"Dammit, I told you to hold him off!" Henry yelled as he took Samantha by the wrist and started running.

"Stop, you idiot!" Samantha shouted, still pounding on him as she tried to get free of his grasp. "You're running _towards_ it! I appreciate your chivalry, but let go of me first, dammit!" Henry did no such thing, and they both charged their way past the painful annoyance, clipping him in the process and sending it spinning in place as they continued their flight.

"But wait! There's more…!" the ghost said as he shoved the knife in his pocket and withdrew a spear, which he began to wave above his head. "I will also throw in a matching set of these fine skewering implements absolutely _free_!"

Henry and Samantha entered the train at the back end and began weaving in and out of its compartments. "What the hell are you doing?!" Samantha yelled.

"Running the slalom!" Henry answered.

"Why?!"

"Because these train compartments are poorly designed, and it's more annoying that way!" They continued their way until they crossed over to the second train, where they stopped for a moment.

"That was close," Samantha panted, then turned to Henry, who was chugging wine to refresh himself. She didn't wait for him to finish before kicking him in the ass, which caused him to spew the fermenting grape juice from his mouth.

"Ow!" Henry complained, massaging away the pain in his rear end with his free hand as he wiped his mouth with his other wrist. "What the hell was that for?!"

"Just making good on a promise," she said. "Now, at least we lost that thing…"

"Not likely," Henry replied.

"How do you know?"

"I still have a headache…" Henry answered, rubbing his temples.

"You sure you're not just hung over?" Samantha asked. She then let out a shrill, abrupt scream as she felt something grab her backside. They both looked behind her and saw another figure, a black guy with very little fashion sense, wearing a tacky ensemble of an orange shirt with a white vest, both quite dirty. At present, he was floating in place, holding his hands behind his back and innocently whistling to himself as he shot glances all around the compartment. He then noticed he was being stared at and faced Samantha and Henry.

"What?!" the ghost demanded with a shrug.

"Did you just grab my ass?" Samantha demanded accusingly, her eyes narrowing.

"Uh, no…" the ghost replied, though his poor poker face stated otherwise. Samantha gave him a hard slap. "What was that for?!" he protested.

"I'm not some typical, everyday _whore_ that you can just feel up!" she declared as she repeatedly jabbed her index finger into the ghost's chest.

"That's right!" Henry concurred. "She's a very _special_ whore!" Samantha elbowed Henry in the ribs for the remark.

"Look," the ghost said with an indifferent shrug, "if she's with you, that's fine with me. She's a little old for my tastes, anyway." Samantha's eye twitched and her body went rigid at the remark. Henry, in an uncharacteristic display of discretion, decided it would be wise to take a discrete step back and did so.

"What did you just say?" Samantha demanded through grit teeth, her eye continuing to twitch as she glared murder at the ghost.

"Uh…" But the ghost couldn't finish before Samantha dove on top of him with a primal war cry. Henry could do nothing but just stand by and switch between wincing in sympathy and gaping in awe as Samantha administered a thrashing so severe, it violently shook the very train they were in. When she was done, she approached Henry, clapping the dust off of her hands before brushing away a stray lock of hair that had managed to escape the bonds of her hairdo. Other than that, her appearance was completely unaltered, which was more than could be said for the pervert, who was now lying in a battered, broken heap on the floor. Henry just took a swig of wine.

"Feel better?" he deadpanned.

"Yeah!" Samantha replied cheerfully. Henry nodded.

"Then let's go," he said, dumbly jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the door before turning to pass through. _'Note to self,'_ he added inwardly, _'in the event we get out of this, have the bitch spayed…'_

They proceeded through the remainder of the train until they found a door allowing them to debark on the opposite platform, where Samantha immediately started to get clingy. "Oh, Henry," she said, laying it on _real_ thick, "I was so _scared_! Thank you _so much_ for rescuing me!"

"Uh, yeah…" Henry said, rolling his eyes as he tried to pry his arm out of Samantha's viselike grip. "I'd say you handled yourself well enough back there…" Samantha looked at him with a naughty glint in her eye.

"How 'bout I handle _you_ next?" she said.

"Hey!" a nagging voice shouted at them, and they turned to see an old woman in a black hat hovering right next to them. "Quit spooning in public! It's annoying!" Henry and Samantha exchanged glances.

"Care to take this one?" Samantha offered.

"It's really not in me to beat up old ladies," Henry replied.

"Then, RUN!" They both made a mad dash south, Henry taking the lead as they approached a door with a red light over it at the end of the platform. He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him as he entered. He then heard a thump and a muffled grunt of pain on the other side of the door, and he suddenly realized he'd shut the door on Samantha. However, when he opened the door to let her enter, she wasn't there.

"Dammit," he muttered, "where the hell did she go now?" Deciding he didn't feel like searching for her, he shut the door again and headed back into what was obviously a maintenance area. "Hmm, must be a photo development lab," Henry said, the red light illuminating the room throwing him off. He saw a Hole in the wall, but there was also a ladder leading to a lower level, and after weighing up his options, decided he wanted to explore the lower level.

The ladder descended into an old, seemingly disused service tunnel, which Henry followed along until he got to a door that opened out onto the Queen Street Line boarding platform. The first thing he noticed was one of those Whiffy Dogs sniffing around. After beating it to death, he continued his way west until the public address system crackled to life.

"Is this on?" Samantha's voice echoed through the station. **CLICK! **"Is this on?" **CLICK! CLICK!**

"Yes, it's on!" Henry answered.

**CLICK!** "Henr--" **CLICK!**

"Yes, I can _hear _you!" Henry shouted.

**CLICK!** "Hello?" Samantha called, followed by three abrupt noises that were probably the result of her tapping the microphone. "Is this on?" **CLICK!**

"Go ahead!" Henry shouted again, growing more annoyed with Samantha's antics.

**CLICK!** "--at you Henr--" **CLICK!** Henry just slapped his forehead. **CLICK!** "Hi, M--" **CLICK!**

"What the hell's she doin'?" Henry muttered.

**CLICK!** "--ing is broken. I thi--" **CLICK!**

"It's not broken!" Henry shouted. "Just keep the button pressed in!" There was a long pause.

**CLICK!** "--broken!" **CLICK!**

"KEEP THE BUTTON PUSHED IN, DAMMIT!" Henry finally snapped.

**CLICK!** "Okay, I think I got it," Samantha said. "Henry, clean up on aisle eight!" She began laughing at her own half-assed announcement. "This intercom thing is fun!" Henry's hand started shaking as his grip tightened around his pipe. "No, seriously, Henry!" Samantha shouted, "I found the exit! Come to the turnstile!" Henry's eye twitched.

"She found the exit right where we started," he muttered to himself. He felt like beating himself over the head with his own pipe, but then decided to take out his rage on the pack of Whiffies roaming around a solitary train stopped on the tracks by the platform. "PETA, kiss my ass!" he said, tapping the pipe against his palm as he approached the dogs.

Before long, Henry was standing over a stinking pile of dead Whiffies. "Pet Sematary," he said as he surveyed his handiwork, "further proof that King Street is named for Stephen King!" He thought about that a moment and he suddenly realized. "Oh, wait a minute, this is the _Queen_ Street Line. I guess that joke was pretty much wasted, then." He just shrugged and decided to investigate the train. Inside, he found a golf club lying on one of the seats in the first compartment. "I guess this must be the 'club' car," he said as he took it up and examined it. He then triumphantly held the club over his head. "Now, _I_ wield the Mighty 9-iron!" His victory speech was subsequently cut short by the PA system crackling back to life.

"Henry!" Samantha yelled. "Quit screwin' off and GET THE HELL UP HERE!"

"All right, all right all ready…!" Henry replied as he slowly lowered the golf club, his thunder having effectively been stolen. "Bitch…" he added under his breath.

"I heard that!" Samantha announced over the PA system. Henry just deposited the club in his pocket and, after taking a celebratory swig of wine, exited the car.

As Henry approached the escalator, a familiar series of black splotches bled from the wall, and out came his old friend, the obnoxious salesperson. Before the ghost could start advertising, Henry wound up and hit the ghost over the head with the wine bottle as hard as he could. This stunned the ghost into silence, but it also shattered the bottle, spilling the remainder of its contents onto the floor. "NOOO!" Henry cried, watching as the only thing that had kept him going thus far soaked into the concrete. "How _dare_ you deprive me of my alcohol!" he seethed. "That _does_ it! I'm gettin' stabbity on yo' ass!" He immediately made good on his threat and began stabbing the ghost with the broken bottle until it fell to the ground, then continued doing so after it was down, almost as though he were possessed by the obsessive-compulsive spirit of Harry Mason.

The PA system came online yet again. "Henry!" Samantha cried, her voice more urgent. "Hurry it up! He's coming!"

"Her and her 'special favors'…" Henry muttered as he dashed up the escalators.

As he ascended, he was surprised to see the wall bulge out and take on the form of a stick figure's upper body, swiping at him as he approached. "D'AAAGH! Stick Ninja!" he cried as he began beating the flailing Ninja with his pipe. It went down after a few hits, but then, another emerged after that one. "You too, huh?! Well, get yourself some blunt-force trauma!" After beating that one down, even more emerged from the wall further along. "Son of a BITCH!" Henry cursed as he lathered, rinsed, repeated.

When he reached the top, the first thing he noticed was a number of articles scattered before the turnstile: lipstick labeled _Smack-Tart_, eyeshadow labeled _Face Hit_, a pneumatic hammer labeled _Makeup Remover_…all Samantha's, no doubt, and all were smeared with strawberry jam. He followed the trail of red substance to a door that had a pinkish placard with the image of a woman and the word "Enticement" carved on it. He took the placard and passed through the door into the station master's office.

Inside looked like the scene from an over-budgeted Hollywood horror movie. Papers were scattered everywhere, strawberry jam was splattered all over every surface, and in the midst of it all was Samantha lying on the floor, her body covered with paper cuts. Henry immediately rushed over to her and knelt down beside her. "Are ya dead?!" he asked, lifting her head off the floor. "What the hell happened?! Was it Yomiko Readman? You're not illiterate, are you?" Samantha just responded by raising her hand and slapping him across the face, smearing him with jam in the process.

"Maybe I…shouldn't have done that White Claudia stuff last night…" she said weakly. "I never got to show you that…tattoo on my ass…"

"That's okay," Henry assured her. "That one on your, uh…'asset' is just fine!" He was referring to the numbers printed on her chest: 16121.

"Am I dying?" she asked. "Give it to me straight, doc…"

"Nah!" Henry shook his head. "You're just trippin'…"

"Well, that's a relief!" Samantha sighed. The last thing Henry remembered was hearing the clattering of metal as Samantha's foot struck a nearby bucket and sent it tumbling across the floor.  
--------------------

**Hell Count:** 7  
**Total Hell Count:** 20

**A/N:** Bonus points to anyone who understands that ending.


	4. Green as the Foliage

Henry woke up in bed. "Samantha?" he ventured. All he got as a response was the sound of sirens grating in his ears. "Man, what the hell is that racket!" he said as he went over to the window and looked out. There were emergency vehicles parked near the subway entrance with lights flashing. "Probably Samantha," Henry noted to himself. "I wonder if this means I won't be able to negotiate for cash…" He left his room, somewhat disappointed that he wouldn't be fattening his wallet.

In the living room, the radio was picking up some strange signals. "Hurry up and get that ambulance!" a man's voice commanded.

"The ambulance is right there, moron!" another responded.

"Just shuddap and move her already!" the first man snapped. "Damn…she's got numbers printed on her chest. I wonder if… You know what this means?"

"No," the other man answered.

"Neither do I," the first man replied. "Just making conversation…"

"Watch out for that guy with the microphone," the second man cautioned.

"What guy with--?" There was a sound of impact, and the broadcast was abruptly replaced by static. Henry just stared.

"What the hell?" he said. After a moment, he just gave a shrug and walked over to his chest, where he dropped off his newly acquired 9-iron club, water pistol and "Enticement" Placard. After that, he went over to the fridge, which he decided was the only proper place that his dearly-departed bottle of white wine should be laid to rest, especially after meeting such a tragic end. Suffice it to say, he was quite surprised to find ten bottles of stuff called Nutra-Health Drink inside. "Probably tastes like crap," he muttered as he shoved one into his pocket and closed the fridge.

The next thing he did was take a look out his peephole, where he saw an old man aged somewhere in his sixties sweeping the floor. It was none other than the superintendent, Frank Scanderlund. He always wore that same white sweater that made him look like some stupid frat boy, an impression driven home by the varsity letters sewn onto the left breast: FU. He also noticed a sixteenth handprint had been added to the others. "Someone's still vandalizing stuff without me," he whined, hanging his head. It was then that he noticed a piece of paper on the floor at his feet. "Oh, lookie! I got mail!" he said as he bent down to pick it up and read it…

_Although the cult itself is gone (fat chance!), I'm sure the spirit of it is still alive. Somewhere…_

_There are too many screwed up things happening in that town._

_I'm investigating two people. Or maybe I should say just one. Eh, I'll say two just for the hell of it. I've just about discovered what's going on. At least, that's what I keep telling myself._

_April 8_

Henry just stared at the paper for a moment. "This must mean something…" he reasoned. He may have been dumb, but…all right, he was an idiot, too. He just filed it away in the scrapbook on the desk in his bedroom for posterity. After that, he made his way to the bathroom, where he noticed the Hole had gotten bigger. "Damn termites," he cursed under his breath as he took his pipe up from the floor. "I'm gonna have to talk to Scanderlund about lowering my rent…" When he looked into the Hole to see if it was still safe, he thought he could hear a lady sobbing from the other side. He crawled into the Hole in the hopes of finding whoever was crying so he could have a little fun at their expense…

--------------------

When he woke up, he was sitting in the middle of a clearing in the forest. It was all dark and misty and stuff, and there were creepy noises all around him. "Ah, the great outdoors," Henry said as he stood up and took a deep breath. He then began to cough and hack uncontrollably. "Damn fresh air!" he complained. "How the hell can people breathe this stuff? I need _smog_…" After looking around a bit, he found a path leading through the woods. It was dimly illuminated by what looked like a street lamp, which cast an eerie glow over the area. "I guess this must be what they call the scenic route," Henry said as he went along. As he neared a gate, he took note of some rocks marked with some strange red text he couldn't read. "It's all in Japanese!" he griped. "Why? Isn't it bad enough that I can't even read my own subtitles?" He just stalked off, muttering in resignation as he passed through a metal gate. "Can't wait for the American version…"

It wasn't long before he came upon a large metal building. "Well, if _this _doesn't violate a few zoning laws," he said as he approached. He noted two signs, one set on either side of the door, each stating, "Danger. Do Not Enter." Henry did the only thing any decent person would do: he entered anyway.

He found he was on an upper floor of what looked like some form of industrial complex and, seeing that the only way to go was down, made for a nearby ramp. However, Henry had a lapse of coordination and ended up tumbling end over end down the ramp and knocking over a group of old oil drums at the bottom. Once the pain subsided enough for him to stand again, he headed into the next area where, lo and behold, there was another ramp to descend. Deciding not to take any chances, he decided to pull a Harry Mason and ran off the edge of the level he was on, but unlike Harry, he had height as an excuse for not landing on his feet. Once again, he picked himself up from the ground and exited the strange building and into the outdoors once again.

The first thing he noticed was that he'd happened upon a car sitting just by the path, its engine still running. "Ahhh!" Henry sighed as he inhaled the hydrocarbons of the exhaust. "Smell those noxious fumes!" Once he was refreshed (if you can call it that), he ignored the clunker and went looking around all the trees on the opposite side of the road. After searching every square inch around the stump marked with more red writing, he suddenly got angry. "Where _is_ it!" he shouted. "Where the hell's that chainsaw!" In frustration, he brought his foot back and kicked the trunk of the tree as hard as he could. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that tree trunks are harder than human feet, and he ended up accomplishing little more than subjecting himself to great pain and embarrassment.

Once he was able to walk on his foot again, he returned to the car to see if there was anything worth "salvaging" from it. The only thing of interest was a piece of paper with something written in it.

_It's been a while since I came to Quiet Hill. Maybe I'll meet Bill Gates this time.  
__But whenever I come to a neato place like Quiet Hill, I always get thirsty._

_Casper Hein_

Henry deduced this Casper Hein character to be the owner of the old beater, and wondered if his thirst problem had anything to do with all the empty pretzel bags lying around. He also noted a memo pad lying among the bags and moved to retrieve it, but in doing so ended up generating a hideous crinkling of plastic that he feared might alert someone to his snooping. Fortunately, he got the memo pad without incident and proceeded to read it.

_Idunno what that pesky guy was yakking about when he said: "His home is the orphanage in the middle. The lake is northwest. So the opposite is southeast." What a dumb-ass thing to say._

_The pesky guy said one other thing I don't get: "If you bring the dug-up key, you can't go back. Ditch it somewhere before you go back." Must have been tripping on that White Claudia stuff._

Once he finished reading the memo, he stuffed it in his pocket and considered stealing the car and taking it for a joyride. He then had second thoughts, considering he wasn't familiar with the layout of the surrounding area, and he didn't want to get lost. After giving the matter some thought, he decided to go out and scout out the area. Then he'd come back and carjack the vehicle.

He passed into the next fenced-off area, where he saw some large boulders sitting in the middle of another clearing. The rocks had several scratch marks carved into them, and were divided by a wooden fence with a number of candles sitting on top. In the candlelight, Henry could make out the form of a figure sitting on a small rock at the base of one of the larger ones. _'Probably a hippie…'_ Henry thought as he walked up to get a better look at the guy. He was a rather lanky guy with a whacked-out Mohawk and a green T-shirt with a winged hamburger on it. _'Or not,'_ he thought.

"S-So y-you c-came…t-to investigate th-this stone t-too…" the man stuttered. Henry was about to tell him the real reason, but then realized that this was likely the owner of the car he planned on stealing, and decided to keep his mouth shut. "Th-There was another g-guy here before…" Casper continued. "A…a…a real pesky guy… B-B-But I was the one, one who f-found this s-stone first…" Henry wasn't particularly interested in what Casper had to say so much as the way he was saying it.

"I-I-In the o-old d-days," Casper continued, "th-the n-n-natives called it… N-No-Nocahoonies… Th-They used it in a…a ceremony…f-f-for talkin'…with their dead ancestors." He leaned forward to speak in a confidential manner. "Though with a n-name like Nocahoonies, you'd think it w-was f-f-for emasculation…" He gestured to the rocks. "I guess th-that would've m-made those the c-c-cahoonies, huh?" Henry was now sitting on the fence with one leg crossed over the other, as though trying to protect something. Unfortunately, the fence was unable to support his weight for long, and the section he sat on gave out beneath him, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground and making him look stupid again.

"A-And n-now…th-th-those guys are, are usin' it too…" Casper continued. "C-C-Call it the m-mother load stone, or mother l-lodestone, or something… Th-They're just u-up, up ahead, in that, that weird building… Op-Operatin' s-some kinda c-crazy re-religious cult… Th-They u-used to c-c-c-collect o-orphans… And, and, and…d-d-did things to 'em… K-K-Kinda g-gives you the ch-chills, huh? This stone… Y-Y-Yeah…g-g-gives me the ch-ch-chills…"

"Oh, you mean you're cold?" Henry said. "All this time, I thought you were just stuttering…"

After getting his ass kicked (and let's face it, he asked for it), Henry continued on his way with second thoughts about stealing that guy's car. He went along for a little ways until he approached a large metal frame straddling the road. When he approached, some big mass that looked like a massive bag of cement with a bunch of toothpicks sticking out of it fell from it and hit the ground with a big thud. "I didn't know cactuses grew on trees," Henry said, missing the obvious metal frame as he nudged it with his foot. "And this far north, too…" He thought for a moment and, after looking around to see if anyone was watching, picked the thing up and hefted it up onto his back.

--------------------

Henry returned after a few minutes to the place where he found the "New England Tree Cactus," snickering at the fact that he'd set it down before Casper's car and ran it over, puncturing all the tires. The thought of how Casper would react upon finding it like that was even better than having carjacked it. Yes, Henry was a sneaky bastard. He had to be to pass by Casper unnoticed with that thing, though that wasn't nearly as hard as carrying it without poking himself, or even picking up an object of that size to begin with. Don't ask how he pulled it off, because nobody knows.

Before long, he came upon a fence with a door set into it. Nailed to a tree beside the door was a sign, on which the names "Quiet Hill Smirk Support Society" and "Dope House" were written. "I wonder if that's anything like a crackhouse, or if the residents were just thickheaded," Henry said as he passed through the door. Inside was what looked like an old playground, at the center of which was a large, dilapidated building. Henry walked around the perimeter of the playground, and as he went along, he noticed several spots on the fence were decorated with ghetto art. "Five years old, and already the little hooligans are on the road to juvenile delinquency," he said. He noted one in particular. "What kinda crap is this? Did an elephant paint this?" he said. Aside from that, the only things worth noting were three more doors, a Hole, more illegible red writing on a stone and the outer walls of the building, and a sign by the door he had entered by.

_DANGER_

_The Outside is filled with dangerous things.  
__If someone goes Outside without an  
__adult's permission, the Master is sad.  
__And when the Master is sad, PEOPLE DIE!_

"Real subtle," Henry said as he continued on.

After a thorough exploration of the yard, Henry decided to see where the other doors led to. After a good forty-five seconds of trying to push one of them open, he noticed the graffiti on it that said "PULL" and, after implementing said method, finally accessed a path leading northwest. He ended up passing through a tunnel, which he noticed to be some kind of dig site. "Wonder who was digging here…" He thought a minute and, after some strenuous thought, put two and two together. "Don't they have child labor laws here?" He just shrugged and started examining some of the machinery lying around, evaluating whether or not he could salvage them and hawk them off for cash.

He examined one and, after failing to find the ignition mechanism, started hitting and kicking it in an attempt to get it to turn on. He was soon rewarded with a steady droning noise that grew ever louder, and he smiled at his own resourcefulness at having been able to activate what was likely little more than an inoperative and utterly worthless piece of scrap. It turned out the droning noise was not the machinery, but a clear indication that a big surprise was imminent.

Suddenly, something stabbed Henry in the ass. He jumped three feet into the air and did a massive butt-buster upon landing, and when he stood up, he found himself confronted by the _true _source of the droning noise: a swarm of bats with large needles for heads. After taking a few blind swings at some of them and missing every one, he took off down the tunnel, the swarm taking on a formation in the shape of an arrow as it followed behind him in close pursuit.

Unfortunately, Henry had an uncanny sense of misdirection, and soon found himself confronted with a wall, blocking any further flight. He turned back to see the swarm of Nail Bats closing in on him rapidly, and just when it seemed he would get a number of additional pores in his skin, he used his dodge technique and ducked out of the way. The Nail Bats crashed right into the wall behind him and knocked themselves senseless, rendering them helpless as Henry went about stomping their lights out after they fell to the ground. Once he was done, he rubbed his now sore rear end. "Bit through my wallet and two credit cards…" he said as he pulled the Nutra-Health Drink out of his pocket. After taking all those falls and that severe beatdown from Casper, he was looking a little worse for wear anyway.

He removed the cap and sniffed the contents. "Smells worse than month-old compost," he said, but just gave a shrug and gulped the contents. "Mmm! Not bad!" he said as he wiped his mouth and tossed the empty bottle away. Sure, he was littering, but who was around to fault him? Besides, there was already plenty of other junk lying around when he got there. So without further ado, he left the tunnel.

He came upon a small clearing that had a clear outlook over a body of water, which was identified asTuluki Lake by a sign on a fence. "A very picturesque scene," Henry said. "I should know, because I have a picture I took of it hanging on my wall." Aside from more of the illegible red writing, the only other things of any interest were a broken lawn gnome on a pedestal and another Hole in the face of the small cliff. Once he was done, he headed back towards Dope House.

The next path he took led southwest. As he went along, he vaguely wondered why the paths were fenced off into sections. "Just like driving cattle," he thought aloud as he went along. "Slave labor _and_ livestock. There are many practices here that most human rights groups wouldn't agree with." He thought about it a moment and just shrugged. "Not my problem."

Before long, he entered an old cemetery completely enclosed within crumbling concrete walls. As he looked around, he found a little boy in a striped shirt. Henry decided that it would be fun to mess with the kid's head and approached him, unnoticed. "Hey, little boy," he said, trying not to cringe at how utterly pedophilic that sounded. At least he'd gotten the kid's attention. "Whatcha doin' here? You know you're trespassing, doncha?" The boy said nothing, just continued to stand there, looking disgustingly cute as he stared up at Henry.

Then, Casper came along and took notice of the kid. "You're…!" he trailed off. "W-W-What was I going to s-say, again…?" he wondered aloud. "Oh, yeah! You're…a kid! No, th-that's n-not right…" Casper took another moment to think. "Oh! Okay, I got it now!" He cleared his throat before continuing. "F-finally… the Th-Third Revelation… S-Something's g-gonna happen… T-That p-pesky guy that was here… H-He said it too… Something big's gonna happen…" He threw his hands up in the air and gave the V for victory a la Richard Nixon. "Finally, it's gonna happen! About damn t-time, too!" He turned away and walked off, laughing maniacally and generally making a fool of himself. Then, the kid pushed past Henry and made his exit. That left Henry standing alone in the cemetery with only one question on his mind at what had just transpired.

"What the hell…?"

**Hell Count:** 5  
**Total Hell Count:** 25

**A/N:** The names Scanderlund and Tuluki Lake are property of Hometown.


	5. Basic Intelligence Mandatory

Henry looked around at the cemetery, which really appeared to have been vandalized. "Probably by that kid," he muttered. "He's gonna catch Holy Hell." He just shrugged and started meandering around. As he went along, he found an exhumed wooden coffin lying in an open grave in the center of the cemetery, its lid missing along with its contents. Scrawled on the bottom of the coffin in strawberry jam were the numbers 11121. "What is that, a ZIP code?" Henry said, befuddled by the strange numbers. They seemed strangely similar to those that he had found on Samantha just before she died. "You know," he added, "I'll bet the two numbers are related…" Of course, Henry's detective skills didn't go much further than stating the blatantly obvious, so he couldn't deduce anything of any real use.

He looked around some more and noted some rather interesting stuff engraved on the headstones. One was engraved with the words, "I told you I was sick!" Another was engraved with the word "Stupid," while the one beside it was engraved with the words, "I'm with Stupid" and an arrow pointing to the former. There were also some stranger messages engraved onto two of the gravestones.

_Go over thataway and you'll start freakin' out over the Descent of the Holy Mother._

And the one on the opposite side of the graveyard…

_Go over thataway and your bachelor pad will go to Hell in a hand basket by the authority of the Lord._

The only other things worth noting were a couple of monuments with more of the Japanese writing in red and a door with a strange series circles on it. Henry regarded the strange symbol on the door. "Looks like what dorks with too much spare time on their hands do to grain fields in the middle of the night," he said. Having seen everything worth investigating there, Henry started back to Dope House.

When he made it back, he saw Casper hanging around the entrance next to a "No Loitering" sign. He decided to go up and join him, but got tired after a few seconds of standing around doing nothing and decided to see what was inside. It turned out the door was locked.

"Th-Th-The d-d-door won't open…" Casper said. "Th-That p-p-pesky guy g-g-gave me something really good… I…I…I…I c-could l-l-let you have it…bu-bu-but not for free."

"Oh, I get it," Henry said. "You want a bribe? How much?" he asked as he began rummaging through his pocket.

"I'm really th-thirsty…" Casper stated, prolonging the pronunciation to offer a blatant hint. Henry brought his hand out of his pocket.

"How 'bout a dime?" he said, offering said coin. Casper briefly shot him an annoyed look, then went back to dropping hints.

"I'm so, so th-thirsty…" he said, making synchronized chopping motions with his hands in a gesture of placement to emphasize each word.

"All right," Henry said, pulling another coin out of his pocket, "how 'bout a quarter?" Casper made as if to grab Henry by the throat and throttle him, but caught himself at the last moment and made one final attempt.

"Oh, chocolate… Oh, chocolate…" he said in a more forceful tone through clenched teeth, swaying from side to side as though dying of thirst as he watched Henry out of the corner of his eye. Henry just stared.

"Then, I don't suppose we could settle this by some form of monetary persuasion…?" he said. Casper draped his arm around Henry's shoulder and hauled him over to speak to him man to man.

"P-pay attention, now," he said, "I'm g-gonna say this really s-s-slow s-so you c-c-can understand. I w-want some chocolate."

"But…I thought you said you were thirsty," Henry said. Casper, having had enough, grabbed him by the seat of his pants with one hand and his shirt collar with the other, lifted him off his feet, and carried him over to the edge of the porch.

"I-I j-just gotta have some chocolate milk!" he said, heaving Henry back and tossing him all the way to the Hole in the wall surrounding Dope House.

--------------------

Henry woke up in his room, as he always did when he left the other world. He remembered something about chocolate milk, and by coincidence (see also Deus Ex Machina), he just so happened to have some. Not wasting any more time, he leapt out of bed and exited the bedroom.

When he entered the living room, he was surprised to hear someone ringing the doorbell. He immediately ran over to the door and smashed his face against it to peer through the peephole. He almost laughed when he saw how distended Irene's face looked when she got up really close to the peephole.

"There's something going on in this room…" she said as she stepped aside.

"What! What is it!" a second voice barked impatiently as another person stepped into the peephole's view radius. It was a middle-aged man with combed back gray hair and a five o'clock shadow, and he didn't need to get up close to the peephole to look funny. He wore a pink, short-sleeved, button-up shirt with palm trees on the breast pocket, and a necktie with duckies and horsies on it. Yup, it's none other than the resident crankcase, Dick Crabtree.

"I heard some weird noises coming from inside there…" Irene explained.

"Yeah," Henry confirmed. "Noises like, 'Help me! Help! Let me out!'" He began banging on the door in addition to his cries for assistance. "Get me the hell outta here, dammit!"

"Hey, Dick," Irene said. "Can you see anything from your window?"

"Yeah," Dick answered. "I can see _lots _of stuff from my window." Irene gave him a look.

"I mean, can you see anything _in this room_ from your window?"

"Oh," Dick replied sheepishly. "No…everything looks just peachy to me." He peered into the peephole suspiciously. "The guy who lives here… What's he like, anyway?"

"I know his name and face," Irene answered, "and that his vocabulary seems limited primarily to the expression, 'what the hell?'" Dick stepped back.

"Well," he said, "in strange situations such as this, one merely goes and tells the super." Irene gave a start.

"Yeah…" she said, obviously feeling stupid for not having thought up such a simple solution herself. "Good idea."

"You'd bet that's a good idea," Henry spat. "Get Scanderlund up here! These big, heavy chains on my door are a clear violation of my lease agreement!" He then suddenly remembered. "Oh, that's right. They can't hear me. Damn it…" Henry just gave a shrug and, after fishing the chocolate milk out of his storage chest, made his way back through the Hole to the other world.

--------------------

"Here's your freakin' chocolactose, ya mercenary!" Henry muttered as he forked over the chocolate milk, which Casper swiped and immediately began chugging.

"Hey…!" he spluttered after the first gulp. "This stuff's lukewarm!"

"You never specified that you wanted it chilled," Henry shrugged. "I made good on my end of the deal, now it's _your_ turn!" Casper just rolled his eyes as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little shovel.

"Here ya go!" he said, carelessly tossing it in Henry's general direction. After it hit him in the face and fell to the floorboards of the porch, Henry knelt down to pick it up and examined it.

"What the hell is _this_!" he demanded. Casper just rolled his eyes and heaved an exasperated sighed.

"It's a _shovel_! Geez, y-y-you're p-pretty d-dense, aren't you?" he said and went back to chugging the lukewarm chocolate milk. Henry examined the shovel closer and noticed there was a thin film of strawberry jam on it.

"Why is there strawberry jam on this?" he asked.

"Th-Th-There was something wr-written on it," Casper said. "M-Must've r-r-rubbed off in m-my p-pocket…" he added with a shrug. Henry was quick to respond as he stood back up. "HEY!" Casper protested as Henry thrust his hand into his pocket and yanked it inside out. Sure enough, the writing was there on the inside of the pocket, though it was now written backwards. Fortunately, Henry was a linguist fluent in Dyslexic and Pig Latin, and was thus able to read the message just fine.

_You'll know where this thing will come in "handy" when you see it. It ain't by the lake!_

"Hey!" Casper said, slapping Henry's hand away. "You m-made me s-sp-spill some!"

"Now you know how _I_ feel," Henry replied. "Lost more than half a bottle of perfectly good white wine."

"Ooh…!" Casper cringed. "That's g-gotta suck…"

"Eh, it's not so bad," Henry shrugged. "It wasn't Corbel, anyway." With that, he went on his way. He headed out on the southwest trail this time, not because he'd figured out the hint in Casper's pocket, but because he'd already been on all the other trails and hadn't seen anything particularly interesting.

He entered an area that was crawling with a bunch of Whiffies that were really stinking up the place with their putrescent presence. He immediately sought to remedy the air pollution problem by implementing the pipe. "Snuff _this_, ya dog-rotting Whiffies!" he yelled as he beat them savagely. The last Whiffy he took on was different from the others. It appeared to be pinkish, and far fiercer in appearance. It snarled at him viciously and bared its teeth, a message that Henry interpreted to mean "beat the crap outta me," or something along those lines. Of course, he happily obliged and went about the business of beating the disgusting dog to a bloody pulp. "All this beating up Whiffies makes me wish I had a newspaper to roll around this thing," he said in reference to the pipe as he passed into the next area.

He ignored what sounded like an angry gorilla trying to imitate a chainsaw in the distance and made his way around a tree with red graffiti on it. It was there that he found a tree with exposed roots that looked like hands, one pointing to a spot the ground and the other giving the thumbs-up. "It's as though they're trying to tell me something…" Henry thought aloud as he tried to do the math. It took him a while, but he finally got the message that he was supposed to dig there. A few shovelfuls of dirt later and Henry unearthed what looked like an old key smeared with strawberry jam and caked with dirt.

He picked it up, but no sooner had he done so than the roots reached out and grabbed it in an attempt to steal it from him. "Hey!" he grunted as he pulled back on it. "I found it first! It's mine!" Fortunately for Henry, he had the looped end, and all he had to do was keep a finger wrapped around it to prevent the thieving roots from taking his prize. It wasn't long before he wrested the key from the grip of the roots and, having won what was, in his mind, a great victory, he immediately took advantage of his bragging rights and stood gloating over the roots. "Catch the birdy…!" he taunted, dangling the key just within reach only to pull it away when they grabbed for it, which he thought was hilarious. The roots responded by giving a rude gesture to the best of their ability, one curled into an upturned fist while the other grasped its partner's wrist in the absence of a suitable elbow. "Hey!" Henry protested. Indignant at the impudence of the roots, he took his pipe and smacked the fist on the knuckles, to which the offended root unclenched the fist and shook itself back and forth in an attempt to ease the pain. "That's what you get…" Henry sneered as he started back towards Dope House.

However, when he tried to leave the area, the mist thickened and shrouded everything. He merely dismissed it as someone fogging for mosquitoes as he started through the area. When he passed through the fence at the other end, he noticed something strange about the area beyond. "Hey," he said. "This place looks familiar…" He just shrugged it off and went on his way. However, upon passing through the next gate, he found himself in yet another familiar-looking place. "What the hell is going on here!" he demanded. "I just left this place back…" he trailed off when, turning around, he saw the tree with the red graffiti on it. Just to make sure, he made his way around to its other side where, sure enough, he found the funky-looking roots. One of the roots waved to him in a mock-genial manner as the other one pointed to something. Henry followed the pointing one's gesture to the key in his hand. "What the hell…?" he said as he saw some writing on the key.

_Déjà vu – the sensation you are doing something you have done before._

"Dammit!" Henry cursed. Hemade sure to give the roots a vindictive kick before proceeding along the path as it led away from Dope House.

Henry entered the next area, ignoring the rocks with the illegible red writing as he made his way over to some steps leading up to an elevated level, in the wall at the back of which was a Hole. He climbed the stairs and was thrilled to find a golf club lying on the ground up there. "Hell yeah! A 6-iron!" he said as he took it up and examined it. "I'll bet landing the ball out here carries a _really _big stroke penalty…"

No sooner had he placed the club in his pocket than he was immediately struck with a headache. "I gotta see if I can't find some Tylenol when I get back…" he said. Then, something tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to see another ghost, this one a man with a receding hairline. He wore overalls with one strap done up, the other being left undone so as to leave the space on his skin with the numbers 04121 printed on it in plain view.

"I don't suppose you've seen my shovel anywhere?" the ghost gruffly said as it loomed over him. Henry held the shovel he'd used to dig up the key out to him.

"Just take this one," he said.

"Thanks," was the ghost's terse reply as he accepted the tool.

"Yeah, now go away," Henry said, making a shooing gesture. "You're giving me a headache."

"Hah! _You've_ got a headache!" the ghost roared. "How do you think _I _felt after getting shot in the head! With a freakin' submachine gun!"

"I'm getting a pretty good idea right now," Henry answered, clutching his head as he tried to distance himself from the ghost.

"But if being killed wasn't bad enough, the bastard went and killed all my animals as well!" The ghost continued, his voice growing harsher as he said this. "That _really_ pissed me off! In fact, I'm _still_ pissed off! And I think I'll take it out on _you_…!" The ghost was surprised to see Henry had moved while he'd been ranting and was now standing with one foot already in the Hole, waving bye-bye to him before ducking into it.

--------------------

Henry got out of bed and, after depositing the key and golf club in his storage chest, decided to stalk the neighbors. When he looked through his door's peephole, he could see Dick Crabtree trying to stalk him back, though he doubted the guy could see him. He eventually got tired and wandered off, after which Henry declared himself the victor for having outstalked the other would-be stalker. After congratulating himself, he decided to peep on his lovely next door neighbor.

Irene was sitting on her bed, and judging by her reactions, she was either watching the funniest show in the history of television, or her "party" had gotten started a little early. While it was entertaining to watch her behave like an amused chimp between intervals of silence, Henry had other business to attend to, and decided it was high time he headed back to the Hole…

--------------------

When Henry woke up in the place with the well, he found that, thankfully, the irritable ghost was off in the far corner of the area, apparently unaware of his presence as of yet. Deciding not to hang around, he immediately returned to Dope House, where he once again used the Hole to return to his room.

--------------------

Henry bolted out of bed and dashed to his storage chest, where he dug out the jellied, dirt-caked key. He noted that the writing on it had changed.

_You suck!_

He just smirked to himself as he placed the key in his pocket, pleased with his own cleverness in outwitting an inanimate object. He then immediately returned to the Hole in the bathroom.

--------------------

Henry ran up to Dope House and used the jellied, dirt-caked key to unlock the front door. Then, thinking he was all badass, he kicked the door open and stepped forward…only to have the door bounce back off the wall and smack him in the face as it slammed back shut on him. Once he was done cursing and clutching his nose, he slowly opened the door and stepped inside with Casper following close behind.

The place was a real disappointment, but not in the sense that he had expected as much. It was just a somewhat large room with nothing but a heap of old, broken furniture and trash scattered all over. "Jeez, w-w-what w-w-were they _doing_ here…?" Casper wondered aloud as he surveyed the room, and indeed, one had to wonder given the state the place was in. But Henry had to admit that as far as cult-operated orphanages went, the place could have been a lot worse.

After a bit of aimless wandering, he noticed there was a memo lying by an old cabinet.

_Have you seen a little girl? Short, black hair, just turned seven last month? Responds to the name Alessa?_

_Is Walter literate yet?_

_Tell me something, already!_

After reading the memo, he wandered around some more until he found an overturned table with a pair of candelabrums and some old books scattered on the floor nearby. He picked one of the books up and read what was still legible.

_The Second Sign  
__And God (or the Devil, whichever you like) said, Offer the Blood of the Ten Losers and the White Grease. Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven. From Obscurity and Vacuum, bring forth Malaise, and gird thyself with Depression for the Receiver of Knowledge._

_The Third Sign  
__And God (read: the Devil) said, Return to the Origin through sin's Enticement. Under the Vigilant eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Disorder. Only then will the Four Repentances be in alignment. Then, shoot to kill!_

Henry assumed it was some form of Do-It-Yourself manual and decided to hang onto it for further reference. He then turned to leave, but suddenly noticed smoke coming out from behind a door, where he heard Casper was trying to sing. There was a placard with what looked like a baby and the word "Origin" carved on it. Henry took the placard and passed through the door to join Casper in the smoking room.

When he entered the room, he found Casper flailing around, completely engulfed in flames. He had a chalice in one hand and the number 17121 printed across the front of his shirt.

"Sweet!" he shouted enthusiastically. "HEY! Everybody! I'm on f-fire! I am on fire! And n-n-not in the r-rock w-way! In the way like…f-f-flames c-coming off of my skin…way!" That was all he managed to say before dropping dead on the floor.

**Hell Count:** 6  
**Total Hell Count:** 31

**A/N:** The rude gesture offered by the roots is equivalent to giving someone the finger, and entails putting one's hand in the crook of his/her arm (which the roots didn't have, hence the wrist-grab as a substitute).


	6. Doing Hard Time and Giving Thereof

Henry woke up in his bed, as per usual upon returning from the other world. "I suddenly have a craving for barbecue," he said, but then he thought about what he'd just said. "Actually, I don't think I'll be eating barbecue for a while yet," he amended as he stood up and headed for his desk to file away the DIY manual fragment in his scrapbook. Then he headed out the door.

When he got to the living room, the radio was broadcasting again. "We have some 'hot' news to report…" the anchorwoman said, then laughed at her own dumb-ass comment. "Anyway… In a forest near Quiet Hill, the fried-crispy corpse of a 30-year-old male was discovered earlier today. The cops have ruled it as a homicide for some reason and are investigating." Henry began to wonder as he listened to the broadcast.

"Nah, it's gotta be a coincidence," he said, waving it off. "I'll bet orphanages burn down all the time in Quiet Hill."

"The numbers 17121 were reportedly printed on the man's body," the anchorwoman added.

"I stand corrected," Henry shrugged, and the broadcast continued.

"Due to the marks on the victim, the cops are investigating possible links to the Walter Donovan case one decade…wait a minute, I'm sorry, actually, it was ten years ago…"

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. "Hark!" Henry said as he pointed to the ceiling. "There's somebody at the door!" After announcing the blatantly obvious, he went over to the door and smashed his face against it as he peered through the peephole. It was Frank Scanderlund, the very man he wanted to see.

"This is the superintendent!" Frank yelled. "Henry! I know you're in there! Come out with your wallet open!"

"Help me!" Henry yelled back, pounding against his side of the door. "There's something wrong with this room! You are _so _lowering my rent for this, Scanderlund!"

Frank didn't hear him. "Henry! Don't think you can get out of paying the rent!" he yelled again. Then he turned away from the door and, after shooting a paranoid glance back over his shoulder at the door, proceeded to manipulate something that made a metallic clinking noise. When he turned back around, he had keys in his hand and inserted the one he'd selected into the lock. After rattling the lock a few times, Scanderlund gave it up. "That's strange…" he said. "It's the right key." He seemed to take a moment to consider something. "Skinflint musta had the lock changed on me somehow," he muttered as he turned to face down the hallway. "Call the locksmith!" he then shouted.

"Call the locksmith!" a voice further down the hall repeated.

"Call the locksmith!" a voice even further down the hall continued the message, and so on. Then, Scanderlund looked back at the door.

"I coulda sworn I heard something in there," he said. "Yeah, that sound… It's the same one as back then." He paused for a moment, appearing to give the matter some thought. "Eh, must be termites," he shrugged and started back down the hall. It was then that Henry saw a seventeenth handprint had been added to the collection on the wall in the corridor. He dismissed it for the moment as he made his way to the bathroom.

When he got there, he saw the Hole had grown yet again. "Those termites are gonna eat me out of house and home!" he said as he took up his pipe. "Of course, in my situation, that might prove to be a _good_ thing," he added as he crawled into the Hole.

--------------------

He had the yucky taste of mildew in his mouth when he woke up, and he saw the reason why when he opened his eyes. He was sprawled face-down on a damp concrete floor that had long since succumbed to the annoying fungal growth that was many a homeowner's bane. "Ptooey!" he spat, trying to get that awful taste out of his mouth as he stood up and looked around. He found himself now standing in a corridor with a perpetual curve to it, probably leading around in a circle. The only sound was that of the incessant dripping of water, which he attributed to lousy plumbing.

"Get me out of here!" Okay, yeah, there was that obnoxiously whiny voice crying for help, too. "Get me out…! Get me out of here…! Help…! Get me the hell out of here…!"

"YOU SHUTS DA HELL UP!" Henry yelled back at the top of his lungs, and then the only sound was that of the dripping water.

"Help! Help!" the voice continued after a moment's pause. "Get me out of here!" Henry immediately sought out the source of the noise to put an end to it post haste. He found it behind one of the many iron doors evenly spaced about the inner wall of the corridor. It was a balding fat guy who was about as damp as the floor with sweat.

"Whatcha in for?" Henry said, leaning up against the wall by the door as he looked in through the barred window. The man just wedged his face between the bars.

"He's…he's gonna kill me!" he rasped. "Walter's gonna kill me! He…he's gonna kill me!"

"Oh, death row, huh?" Henry said. "Well, wha'dya want _me _to do about it?" The man sighed.

"You're kinda slow, aren't ya?" he said. "Maybe if I started YELLING IT AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS! HOW'S THAT FOR YA, HUH!" Henry held his hand over his ear, trying to ease it of the pain from being bombarded by such a loud volume of noise. "Now get me the hell out of here!"

"WHAT!" Henry said. The fat guy just reached out the window and gestured at the doorknob. "Oh, okay," Henry said as he gripped the handle on the door. As was probably to be expected, the door wouldn't open. "Well, sucks to be you," Henry shrugged in resignation.

"Awww…!" the fat guy whined.

"Look on the bright side," Henry offered. "Even if we _did _get the door open, I doubt you'd be able to get out anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean!" the fat man demanded.

"Well, think about it," Henry said. "The way I see it, you'd probably get stuck in the door."

"Oh is that so!" the fat guy sneered. "Well, how do ya think I got in here to begin with!" Henry just shrugged.

"I'd think they built the place up around you," he said.

"Built the…!" the fat man spluttered. "Why don't you shut up and _do_ something, already!"

"Right, just wait here," Henry said as he started off. "Don't go anywhere!" he taunted.

"Yeah, very funny!" the fat man snarled, but Henry paid no attention as he headed down the corridor. "Hey, wait! Come back!" the man yelled. "You can't just leave me in here!" He started to bawl hysterically in frustration.

"Quit blubbering!" Henry yelled. "I'll get you out, already!" And with that, he made his way down the corridor. He tried out the doors to the other cells as he went along, deciding it wouldn't hurt to explore and, in so doing, waste as much time as he could get away with in getting the guy out. He could just tell him he got lost, or something.

As he went along, he found a piece of paper with writing on it sitting on the floor.

_Whoop dee doo! I finally got out of that cell. Instead of doing the smart thing and escaping from this hellhole, I decided to explore and run the risk getting caught and severely punished._

_The scariest place was the 1st floor basement. There's a kitchen in the northeast, but that's not the scary part. The scary part is the door in the northwest, because it leads to…The Death Chamber! Dun, dun, dunnn! To get in there, you have to punch in the right numbers, because it's not enough to just press them. I don't know the numbers, and it was too dark to see the panel, but given the simplicity of the uniform arrangement for all numerical keypads, the latter shouldn't have been a problem to go by touch alone. Anyway, I didn't go in._

Henry, having started to pick up the habits of a packrat since starting through these wacky worlds, stuffed the note into his shirt and went about exploring the cells. Each cell was uniform in design – wedge shaped with a bed and toilet on one side and a desk and seat on the other, along with the door in the outer wall and a small porthole set high in the back. One cell had what looked like a noose hanging from the ceiling above the bed, and on the desk was a note.

_Hasn't anyone around here ever heard of privacy?_

That was it. Henry turned the page and found an interesting poem about dead men swinging in a tree and the various crimes for which they were hanged. Nothing all that great, but still, he decided to see if he couldn't put it to some music as he continued exploring the other cells. He decided on a tune with a reggae style.

"_Dead men, dead men!_

_Swingin' in a tree, swingin' in a tree,_

_how many do you see?_

_Dead men, dead men!"_

Well, now he had the tune stuck in his head, and for some reason he couldn't fathom, it reminded him of police car dash cam footage. Anyway, he'd have to put up with it as he went about his business.

Another cell had these weird flatworm-looking things inching their way along the floor and walls. He thought it would be fun to whack them with his pipe, but no matter how hard he concentrated, he just couldn't manage to lock onto them for some reason, so he left. Another cell had some red graffiti on the wall.

_I'm being peeped at from the middle room._

A shadow suddenly fell upon the room, and Henry turned to look at the peephole. The strange shadow soon passed, but that wasn't nearly as strange as when he looked back at the graffiti, for it had changed.

_Told ya._

Henry decided he'd just about had it for that floor and decided it was time to be on his way.

He passed through a set of double doors in the outer wall of the corridor and found himself in a room with normal architecture. That is to say, it was rectangular. There were doors set into the walls on either side and a Hole on the far wall. Next to the Hole was a note.

_To get to the voyeur's rooms in the middle of this dump, you have to use the dump chutes in the cells. However, on the 1st and 2nd floors, the cells are all locked so the kiddies wouldn't discover them. Ain't we sneaky?_

_Anyway, you have to get to the 1st floor from one of the cells on the 3rd floor. I know how to do it, but it's a real pain in the ass. And the lights only work on the 3rd floor. It kinda makes me wonder how many building construction codes this place violates._

"I was right," Henry said, noting the part about kids, "they grew up to be juvenile delinquents. Why else would they be sent here?" After not receiving an answer to his question, he just stuffed the note into his pocket for reference and went on his way.

He attempted to pass through one of the side doors, but found it to be locked, so he passed through the ones directly opposite and, after beating down a few Stick Ninja, descended a spiral ramp. On the way, he came across a big, honkin' horse pill lying on the ground. Henry picked it up and noted it to be a large Tylenol tablet. "This is exactly what I need!" he said as he pocketed the find before continuing his journey downward.

When he passed through the door at the bottom, he found himself in a large room with a huge waterwheel in the center. "No wonder the lights only work on one floor," Henry said. "Equipment thiscrappy _would_ be prone to brownouts." He continued to wander aimlessly about the room until he came across a rusty sign.

_To turn on the lights on the 3rd floor cells, turn this waterwheel. In case you're dense as lead, just remember that the water must flow in the direction of the waterwheel. But first, you gotta open the sluice gate on the roof._

Henry pondered that message for a moment. "What's a sluice?" he wondered aloud. He just shrugged and took the key by the sign. Then, deciding the sign would look good in his scrapbook, he yanked it from its signpost and stuffed it into his pocket.

Unfortunately, the noise produced by this act woke up a nearby swarm of Nail Bats, and we all know how irritable they are when woken up. They immediately proceeded to swarm around Henry at insane speeds, looking like electrons in orbit around a nucleus, which was played by Henry as he swung his pipe around at equally insane speeds in a repeatedly failed attempt to smack the Nail Bats away.

After a moment of this swarming and thrashing around, the Nail Bats broke off their air strike and hovered together just beyond the reach of Henry's pipe where they just watched him, as if in silent mockery of how he was so utterly oblivious that he didn't even notice their absence as he continued his speed-swinging frenzy. After a moment of watching the results of their handiwork, the Nail Bats converged once again on Henry and continued to annoy him by playing the electrons to his nucleus.

After another moment of these shenanigans, Henry finally ran out of breath and stopped swinging to gasp for much-needed air while the Nail Bats continued swarming. Then, realizing after a moment that they'd worn him out, the Nail Bats retreated back to wherever it was that they came from because, let's face it – harassing someone's no fun unless they give you a negative reaction. Of course, this went completely over Henry's head. "Hah! Guess I showed you!" he gloated as he went on his way. But before heading back upstairs, he decided to see what was beyond that door for the sake of being thorough.

The first thing he saw when he passed through the door was the generator. How that waterwheel was supposed to get this thing up to enough RPMs to provide this place with power was beyond him, and not just because he had no clue as to how the principles of electricity and conduction and stuff were supposed to work. He passed around the generator and took note of just how large the room was. At the far (and by far, I mean _far_) end, there was a door with those crop circles on it. And this door was quite large. "Wow!" he said, tilting his head back to look up at it. "It's huge! It's massive! It's downright unnecessary." He tried to reach the doorknob, but he was just too short. He decided it was just as well, for he didn't really feel like seeing what would necessitate a door of such a size. Odds were that it would step on him and leave a vaguely human-shaped smoosh print. That thought didn't particularly appeal to him, so he left and headed back upstairs, where he put his newly acquired key to use on the locked doors he'd tried earlier.

He found himself standing outside the building on a metal walkway spiraling around the outside wall. Henry followed it up to the second level and decided to search the whole place in hopes of finding something with which he might be able to maim or otherwise inflict bodily harm on any more of the stupid-looking thingies he might come across. Unfortunately, all he found were more stupid-looking thingies in the form of large, mushroom-like objects that did little more than annoy him by just standing there, impeding his progress and making yucky noises as they swayed back and forth. He noted that all of them had faces with various comical expressions drawn in marker on their rounded caps. "What the hell _are_ these things…?" he wondered, prodding one of the Mushroom Heads with his pipe. It burst at the slightest touch, scattering a fine dust in the air that tickled Henry's nose and stung his eyes. "Argh! Pepper spray!" he yelled as he then began to sneeze uncontrollably.

Then, he suddenly felt something heavy fall on top of his head. When he reached up to lift it off, he felt it was slimy and pulsing in his hand. He looked at it and noted it to be a large, bluish, slug-like creature reminiscent of a small Graboid. "Eaygh!" he screamed, flinging the Graboidite into the air as he tossed his hands up in panic and charged through the group of Mushroom Heads. They all exploded in his wake, coating him with their evil powder of histamine irritancy, which caused his skin to itch. He scratched so furiously that he ended up depleting his own lifebar by about half. "Damned accursed powder from Hell!" he yelled as he went about exploring the rest of that level.

One of the cells he noticed was filled with bottles. He had initially been thrilled and immediately flung the door open to charge inside, but his hopes for getting any alcohol were soon crushed upon finding nothing fermented in the bottles. Another cell had nothing but laundry hanging out to dry, and a note hanging on the wall.

_Dammit! I pissed myself! Maybe nobody will notice the obscene yellow stain as long as it's dry._

_WTF! A shadow! I think somebody saw me! AND I'M NOT IN MY CLOTHES!_

Henry vaguely wondered if the inmate responsible for this one didn't belong in a psychiatric ward instead of this prison as he made his way out to continue exploring.

There was one other cell that would open on that floor, and inside, there was an open notebook on the desk.

_I've been keeping tabs on the voyeur's room peephole, and sometimes he's there. I can tell, 'cuz I see a shadow move or hear his footsteps. I gots da madd deduction skillz, yo._

That was all there was for that floor, so Henry made his way back out to the hall with his Whiffy-smacking pipe of doom held ready in case any more Mushroom Heads should dare try to impede his progress. Unfortunately, he had dismissed the Graboidites as inconsequential until he absently stepped on one, which somehow sent pain penetrating through the sole of his boot and shooting up into his foot as the slug-like creature splattered in a mess of strawberry jam on the floor. This pissed Henry off immensely, so he made sure to swat down and crush underfoot every Graboidite he came across. Somehow, it didn't hurt when he stomped on them, which was essentially the same as just stepping on them. He decided not to think about it too hard as he went on his way.

He decided to forego the third floor for the moment and headed back to the Hole on the first floor, for he was pretty roughed up (thanks to himself) and needed to go back for a quick pick-me-up. Or pick-_him_-up, or whatever…

--------------------

Upon waking, Henry got out of bed and headed out for the main room, where he noticed the TV was broadcasting static. "Uh-oh," he said. "I hope this doesn't have anything to do with that unlabeled video I watched a week ago… Or that phone call I got immediately afterward…" Perturbed, he turned away and noticed another note had been slid beneath his door, which he took up and read.

_I'm freakin' out, man! I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but I've never been this scared before. Not since that time I was forced to watch Teletubbies._

_In case something happens to me (as in, I DIE!) I've decided to write down what I've learned for whoever you are that's living in the apartment now, ya poor sap!_

_I've been investigating a mass murder that took place seven years ago in which ten people were killed in ten days. That's an average of one per day, in case you're wondering. They were killed in a variety of rather unimaginative ways, but one thing they had in common was that each corpse had the following numbers, in order of their deaths, printed on them:_

_01121, 02121, 03121, 04121, 05121, 06121, 07121, 08121, 09121, 10121… The name of their killer… it was printed (handwritten, actually) as well…_

_His name was…Walter Donovan._

_April 4_

After reading through the information, he went to his bedroom and filed it and the notes and sign from the prison away in his scrapbook. He then went back out to get a Nutra-Health Drink, but he suddenly noticed he wasn't all scratched up anymore. "I wonder how that happened?" he said, and with a shrug, he made his way over to his door and looked through the peephole.

Immediately, he saw Irene suddenly dash into view. She was moving all about and flailing her arms erratically. Henry figured she was either shooing a bee or trying to come up with a new dance routine for that party she was going to. Then, in an attempt to flee, Irene ended up running into the wall across from the door, which she stuck to for a good three seconds before she slowly started to tilt back, remaining perfectly rigid as she fell to the floor. Henry just laughed. "Normally, I have to _pay_ for entertainment like this!" he chuckled as he made his way back to the Hole in his bathroom.

**Hell Count:** 5  
**Total Hell Count:** 36

**A/N:** Why Graboids? Well, because Tremers sounds like Tremors. But I'm sure you already drew that connection. At least, you _should've_…


	7. Turnabout and Foul Play

Upon arriving at the prison again, Henry immediately made his way up to the third floor, the last place he had yet to explore, and while he was at it, he would be sure to hit as many creatures as he happened upon with his pipe. After all, that was the most fun he'd had in the five days that he'd been trapped. In that time, he'd been forced to take up sitting in his kitchenette and watching the linoleum curl for entertainment when watching his neighbors on the other side of the apartment building failed to provide anything interesting to watch.

He entered the double doors leading to the third cellblock and started off to his right, opting first to clear out anything that might prove a pesky nuisance as he explored. He didn't have to search long, though, for he had only gotten about a quarter of the way around the cellblock when he found the most incredibly messed up thing he'd seen yet. It looked like infant Siamese twins draped in brown shag carpeting, and in the absence of a lower body, it got around on its hands, one of which it was balancing on while the other was outstretched to point directly at him in an Uncle Sam-esque, "I want YOU!" sort of manner. Henry thought it was looking at him funny and decided to implement the Eddie Dombrowski policy by killing it for doing so.

However, the creature was the first to take initiative and immediately charged at him. Just it was about to enter swinging range for Henry, the creature spun around on its palm to take a swipe at some enemy that wasn't even behind it. "What the hell was _that_!" Henry shouted.

"Rshwhr…" the creature whispered as it meandered about. Henry blinked.

"What…?" he asked.

"Rshwhr…" the creature repeated.

"I can't hear you!" Henry said. "Speak up, dammit!"

"WE SAID 'RECEIVER,' YOU DUMB-ASS!" the creature finally shouted at the top of its lungs. Henry took offense at the statement and readied his pipe, but for some reason even he himself couldn't fathom, he decided to focus his attention instead on one of the many low-priority Graboidites on the wall, leaving himself wide open as the creature brought the palm of its hand crashing down on him. Henry then decided that the creature was pissing him off and, as soon as he recovered from the considerable pain, decided to cut the nonsense and get about the business of bludgeoning the abomination until it bled. He hit it in the shoulder as much as he could, but that didn't really hurt it so much as it did annoy it to the point of giving him another rather painful slap. Henry then decided it would be wise to back off until he could devise a more devious strategy.

The creature then made a flying leap at Henry with the intent of landing on him. This turned out to be a mistake, for all that the intended target had to do was take a single step backward and the creature would have nothing but wet concrete to do a belly-flop upon, which is exactly how it played out. Henry used the time it took for the monster lying at his feet to stand up again to move around behind it while readying a charge attack, and when the thing was back on its hands, he let fly with the pipe and beaned it right over the heads. The creature stood there dumbly for a moment, and for a brief instant, it looked as though it wouldn't fall over. After a few seconds, it began to rock forward on its palms, and Henry blew at it just for good measure to make sure it fell to the floor. Then, of course, he delivered a hearty boot-stomp to insure that it wouldn't be waking up anytime soon.

"Ohh…" Henry groaned as he leaned against the inner wall of the circular corridor. "Who would've thought a rug, of all things, would be such a tough customer?" He decided then that it was official, and christened his latest quarry…the Rug Beater. Of course, he would be sure never to tell anyone that the carpet monster had actually given him a run for his money, otherwise his ego would be more bruised than he himself was at the moment. Henry decided he would probably do well to just forget about it altogether as he went about the business of exploring that floor.

One cell was littered with a large number of books. "Looks like Miss Readman's apartment," he commented. Strangely enough, he couldn't bring himself to read any of them no matter how hard he tried. At length, he gave up and exited to investigate the other cells, a number of which were empty, save for large holes in the floor leading to the cells directly below.

He entered one cell that was occupied by a bunch of Mushroom Heads. Those things annoyed him, the way they made those faces at him, made those yucky wet noises and swayed like they were performing some obscene dance. After clearing out the fungus infestation, he took note of a journal on the desk.

_We had some good stew yesterday. Mmm…beefy! In the cafeteria, I heard something about a death chamber behind the kitchen from one of the new cooks. Came running out of the kitchen, yelling, "It's made from people! It's PEOPLE!" Yup, seems they take meat straight from the dead inmates and feed it to us. Mmm…human: the OTHER red meat. You eat what you are! Yeah… When I got back here after that, I bowed before the porcelain altar and offered a REALLY huge sacrifice, if you know what I mean._

Henry pocketed the journal on an impulse and moved over to the other journal sitting on the bed. He vaguely wondered why anyone would keep two journals at once as he read.

_I think I'm screwed. I stood in front of the voyeur's room and screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs, but nobody came out, even when I made a bunch of disparaging remarks about his mother._

Once he finished reading, Henry continued his exploration of that floor. One had a shirt and pants laid out on the bed, and that was it. There was also a note on the desk.

_Now it will look like I'm sleeping! Sort of… Now, if I can just get some cement so I can mold a replica of my head._

_WTF! Feetsteps? I wonder if they saw me._

In another cell, Henry found some red graffiti on the wall.

_I wanna hide. But I can't hide. They never let me do anything I want!_

He had just entered a cell in the southwest area of the corridor when he saw he wasn't alone. Just to his right upon entering, he saw a blond guy in a green jacket stooping down on the floor with his back turned to him, apparently too preoccupied with something to notice Henry's entrance. Curious, Henry peered over the man's shoulder to see what he was doing. What he saw would psychologically scar him and haunt him for the rest of his life.

The man had his arm shoved halfway up the porcelain hobbyhorse. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!" Henry shouted. The man looked around and just stared at Henry for a moment, almost as if trying to absorb the fact that he'd been caught.

"Uhh…" he hesitated, removing his hand from the toilet as he stood up. He then shot a few glances around. "I, uh…thought I saw something in there. Yeah, that's it!" Henry shot him a dubious look.

"So you just reached in there?" Henry asked. "With your _bare hand_?"

"Oh, don't worry!" the man said, holding out his hand to show Henry, who backed away from the presumably contaminated gesture. Much to Henry's surprise, there wasn't a trace of fluids or matter best not described on his hand. "See? That's the good thing about the physical limitations of a polygon environment."

"Yea-- wait a minute…!" Henry said. "The book said this place was a _pixilated _environment."

"Well, where do you think the surface textures come from?" the other guy said, gesturing to the rather filthy toilet.

"Good point," Henry said, "but still, man, that thing with you and the toilet…it's just plain _weird_…" He then noticed the hole in the floor and decided to make use of it in getting away from this twisted Renton copycat. "Look," he said, inching his way toward the hole, "it's been, uh…yeah…but I've really gotta be getting to the basement." He was just about to jump when the weird guy intervened.

"Step aside!" he said, shoving Henry away from the edge. "Let a professional show you how it's done!" Then, without any hesitation, he jumped into the hole.

Henry just stared in disbelief. Hell, that guy didn't even know how far the fall was, and he'd just jumped without a second thought. Henry approached the hole again and peered over the side. He was subsequently joined by a small, green, diaper-clad duckling. "Well," Henry said to the duckling, which just stood there and looked up at him while sucking his thumb, "much as I'd like to leave this to the professional idiots, I don't see any way around this." So, without further hesitation, Henry made a daring leap into the opening in the floor.

The duckling peered over the side after him and removed his thumb from his mouth to speak. "Henry go down the hooooole!" he said.

--------------------

Henry landed safely in the cell below the one he'd jumped from despite the fact that there was also a hole in the floor in that one also, perfectly aligned with the one above. And on top of that, he was still on the outer end of the cell, which is where he'd made the leap from above. Something was really screwed up with the physics in that place. Or maybe it was those physical limits of the pixilated environment, or something. He decided he should probably just be thankful he wouldn't be breaking or spraining anything as he leapt through the second hole into the cell below, where he found still another hole. Of course, he jumped through that one as well.

When he landed after the third jump, he found himself in a large room. "Finally!" he said. "That wasn't so bad! I guess that weird guy musta jumped before…"

He was suddenly startled when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Thinking it was the weird guy, he wheeled around. "KEEP YOUR TOILET WATER HANDS OFFA ME, YOU…!" he trailed off when he saw that it wasn't who he'd thought it was at first. Instead, there were two Rug Beaters pointing him out. "Oops…"

After getting slapped around like a stooge for a few moments, Henry managed to get himself knocked into the pipe spanning from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room, knocking it out of alignment just enough to cause it to jet water from the opening between the joint. The water drenched the two Rug Beaters which, unable to stand with the added weight of the water soaking their carpeting, fell to the floor. Henry, not wasting a second, immediately ran up to them and gave them the mighty boot-stomp of doom to insure they wouldn't be able to get back up. He decided to pass on making any dull one-liners and just exited the room.

He found himself in a short corridor, and at the end just to his left was a circular culvert with a ladder in the center leading up. Of course, he moved over to investigate and climbed up to the second level.

He climbed into a circular guard station with small portholes set equidistant around the perimeter of the room in the wall. There was a note on the desk…

_The place is really going to pot. We can't even open the doors to a lot of the cells anymore. The kids inside are trapped. But the less they know about that, the better, though I'm sure they'll figure it out on their own, eventually._

_At least I still get to peep on them, though, so that's a plus! I get to watch as they waste away in their cells. No food, no shower…sucks to be them!_

_An engineer suggested we solve the problem by digging holes below the cells, though it would seem less laborious and more economical to just fix the doors. Then again, this place is already a monument to inefficiency. Anyway, we can rotate the floors of the building and align the holes so that we can get rid of the "evidence" without anybody noticing. We're sneaky bastards, we are!_

_P.S._

_Chief,_

_I bet you're just dying to see the torture chamber behind the kitchen. Hell knows the kids already are…literally, thanks to our own gross negligence!_

_Anyway, there are three rooms with tomato soup stains on the bed (which is probably why we don't just deliver their food to them through the windows in the cell doors to keep them from starving). There were three such spilling incidences, one per floor. Just align the rooms and…wait, B-7? I got BINGO! Yay! No, wait…dammit! He sunk my battleship!_

_P.P.S._

_I'm sleepy… All this sitting around doing nothing takes a lot outta me._

After stuffing the memo into his pocket, Henry started peering through the peepholes to look into the rooms. Sure enough, there was a cell in the northwest with a tomato soup stain on the bed. There was another with a similar stain, but it was only on the floor. He then checked on the cell with the trapped guy, and was amused to see the fat slob was still muttering to himself.

"This sucks worse than that time I got busted for possession of White Claudia…" the fat guy muttered to himself. Of course, Henry could relate to his current plight, but damn it, it was just so funny when it happened to someone else!

Once he'd checked every other cell, he climbed up to the second level, which had a room identical to the one below, save for the presence of a small stand with a valve on it just beside the opening in the floor. The first thing Henry did was check the memo on the desk.

_To keep a close eye on the kiddies, it's important to keep the cells well lit. The lights on the 3rd floor were originally bought as searchlights. Yeah, the kids keep trying to escape for some reason… Anyway, we ended up having to use them to light the joint._

_Anyway, as a precaution against blackout, they were set up to run on a private generator. Unfortunately, those cheap bastards decided to cut funding, and we had to jerry-rig our own generator and waterwheel in the basement. Damn them! So, to light up the 1st and 2nd floors, use the dump chutes._

_You can light up any of the cells by rotating the floors and aligning the holes. We also do this occasionally to freak the kids out. I just love messing with their heads!_

_P.S._

_Chief, the valve in the middle of the room is for rotating the floor. Don't bother with the 1st floor, 'cuz it don't turn. Damn. Anyway, just align the 2nd and 3rd floor cells with the soup-stained beds with the one on the 1st floor._

_BTW, the peepholes are there for a reason. Use them so you don't make the place seem like a carousel. The last thing we want is for the kids to enjoy themselves here. Anyway, give it a try. It's lots of fun! And don't forget to open the sluice gate on the roof, because it's always nice to be able to "light up" on the job. Thanks for nothing, Chief!_

Henry noted that word again. "What the hell is a sluice!" he demanded before reading the rest of the memo.

_P.P.S._

_I want to go home. I don't want to have to deal with the deep moral crisis I'm having, watching the trapped kids waste away and not doing a damn thing to help them._

After stuffing the memo into his pocket, he went about checking the peepholes. He found the cell with the stained bed, but he also saw another with something he could barely see on the table through the dim light inside. He made a point to check it out and went over to the valve.

He inspected the valve, and there was just something about it that somehow enthralled him. So round, so inviting…he just had to turn it! He reached out and, with a shrill screeching of rusting metal, the valve turned, and the building shook as the corresponding floor rotated with it. "That _was_ fun!" Henry said. "In fact, it was _so _fun, I think I'll do it again!" And he did. Again and again and again. It wasn't until the fat guy started shouting at him that he stopped.

"HEY!" the fat guy yelled from the first floor. "CUT THAT OUT! WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE, A CENTRIFUGE?"

"Sorry!" Henry responded with a mischievous grin. "I guess I musta been possessed by Valtiel, or something!"

"No," the fat guy responded, "that's Walter!"

"Oh, right!" Henry said. He gave the fat guy's response some thought. "How do you know that!" he demanded.

"I don't!" the fat guy answered. "Who's Valtiel!"

"Idunno!" Henry replied. He just shrugged and, after checking the peepholes to see where the cell with that thing on the table was, climbed up to the third floor.

Once again the room was the same boring design as the one below. The only thing interesting about it was the memo stuck up on the wall.

_The Secret Number for getting through the door in back of the kitchen this month is 0302._

_Thanks for not being unnecessarily belligerent about it._

"Hey!" Henry said. "That's the same as my room number!" When it became apparent that nobody cared, Henry dejectedly stuffed the note into his pocket and made his way back down to the basement, where he unlocked the door at the other end of the corridor so he wouldn't have to go through all of that unnecessary crap involving hole jumping in order to get back to the voyeur's rooms. That, and it was the only way out.

--------------------

Henry dropped into the cell in question and investigated the item on the table, which turned out to be a stun gun. "Bitchin'!" he said as he took up the weapon. "I wonder if it still works?" he said as he pocketed the find before jumping holes again.

--------------------

After going through the motions with the rotating floors again, he aligned the cells with the soup-stained beds and started back down to make use of them.

When he got to the bottom of the ladder, he found he wasn't alone anymore. The fat guy was kneeling in front of the kid from the cemetery in the forest.

"C'mon!" the fat guy whined. "Just one candy bar! A guy's at least supposed to get one last request!" The kid just looked at him as though he were the most pathetic deadbeat on the planet before turning and leaving. Henry decided it would be fun to make the fat guy jump out of his skin and who knows how many layers of fat, and snuck up on him from behind.

"BOOGIEBOOGIEBOOGIE!" he shouted as he tickled the guy's back. The fat guy screamed like a little girl as he jumped to his feet.

"What the hell's the matter with you!" he shouted. "You tryin' to give me a heart attack!"

"Sorry," Henry said, "I suppose I really shoulda considered your cholesterol level before sneakin' up on ya!" The fat guy obviously didn't care for that remark. "Anyway," Henry added, "who's the kid? And who are you?"

"His name's Walter…" the fat guy answered, "Walter Donovan. I used to work at the orphanage, watching the kids and beating them up…" He caught himself and tried to recover. "I mean, uh…giving them stern disciplinary lectures," he amended. "Yeah, I'm Andre DeSilva. Anyway, they tried to make it seem like an orphanage… But according to the town's Holy Scriptures, it was actually the center of their religion…"

"Oh, ya don't say?" Henry replied, not really paying attention.

"Yeah," Andre said. "That kid, Walter… He was really into that voodoody-oh-doodoo stuff… Especially that 'Descent of the Holy Mother' crap-ola… Pretty scary, huh?"

"Yeah, whatever," Henry said, brushing him off. "So, that kid's gonna kill you, huh?"

"Yeah," Andre said. "Never woulda been such an asshole to him back then if I'd known this would happen!"

"Right," Henry said. "So, uh, how did you get out?"

"Out of where?" Andre said. "Oh, you mean the cell? When you rotated the third floor, it tripped the lock on the door." Henry looked at him suspiciously.

"How did you know it was the _third_ floor?" he demanded.

"Because that's the only floor that can trip it," Andre said. "I don't know why…" He just shrugged and turned to leave.

**ZORCH!**

Andre was rocked by what felt like a mule kicking him right in the ass, and the next thing he knew, he was looking up at the ceiling from down on the floor with a strong metallic taste in his mouth.

"Kick ass!" Henry said, looking down at the stun gun in his hand. "This thing rules!" Andre sprang off the floor and gave Henry a rough shove.

"What the hell was that for!" he yelled.

"Just wanted to see if it worked," Henry answered. "Sorry, I didn't think it would do much through all those pillows you're smuggling under your clothes."

"That's it," Andre said, "I don't have to put up with this crap!" He pointed at Henry with both index fingers. "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" he added, pointing to the door to emphasize his statement of departure before storming off. Henry noted the exit he'd used.

"Figures he'd leave through the cafeteria," he said as he went on his way.

--------------------

Henry landed in the kitchen in the basement after jumping through the proper holes. "Finally!" he said as he made his way over to the door leading to the northwest quarter. "This must be it," he observed. He tried to find the number pad but, much to his dismay, he couldn't use it. "Come on!" he griped. "Why can't I use it!" He then remembered, and the realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

He'd forgotten to restore the power. "DAMMIT, WHY!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Why can't I do this in the dark! It's just a freakin' ten-digit keypad! Any idiot could do this by touch alone! But NOOOOOOO! I _have_ to be confined to the limitations of this pixilated environment! Now I have to go _all _the way back up to the roof and open some wha'dya-name-it that I don't even know what it is!"

Then, suddenly, as if by divine intervention, the light came on seemingly of its own accord amidst the melodic voices of an unseen heavenly choir. "Wow…" Henry said, stunned by the convenient turn of events. "I wonder how that happened."

Meanwhile, on the roof…

A shady figure stood before the concrete cylinder standing in the center of the reservoir on the roof. One would be able to recognize him from a mile away. Not because of any distinctive facial features so much as a lack thereof, for aside from an unusually wide mouth, this particular somebody didn't have a face. His ensemble consisted of heavy jack boots, a dingy, sleeveless robe and strange latex gloves with the three middle fingers all fused together; definitely not the usual attire for your everyday plumber. That was probably what the guy was, for he was apparently the one responsible for opening the sluice, likely by turning the control valve on the side of the concrete cylinder. His job being done, he took up his pipe wrench and plunger and started off, his head twitching violently as he whistled the tune to the chorus of _I Want Love – Studio Mix_.

Back in the basement…

Henry attempted to disengage the electronic lock, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't operate the keypad without first taking the placard hanging on the door. Said placard had the image of an eye and the word "Vigilance" engraved on it. "Uh-oh," Henry said. "I think this means fat boy's a free man at last." He took the placard and examined the keypad, which he noted had the lowest digits nearest the zero on the bottom. "Huh! Never would've guessed it was arranged like that," he said as he punched in the number. "I guess I wouldn't have gotten it in the dark after all!" And with that, he passed through the door.

As far as torture chambers went, the one Henry had just entered could be described as sparse at best. It only had a rotary saw and a wooden thingy designed to bind someone in the spread-eagle position hanging from the ceiling. And there was very little floor. There was an elevated concrete platform standing in the middle of a pool of stagnant water, and a metal walkway spanning the distance between it and the ledge in front of the door. Henry made his way out to the platform in the center of the room.

When he got there, he saw that he had been right about Andre. He was lying face-up in the water with the numbers 18121 printed across his belly. "Seems I was right," Henry said, "though I never woulda guessed a guy _his _size would float."

Then, as if on cue, a familiar-looking circus clown rose from the depths and poked his head above the surface. "Henry," he said, "down here, they all _float_…" Henry just rolled his eyes and turned to leave. "Hey!" the clown shouted "Don't just ignore me!"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't," Henry shot back. "Hell, you're not even worth my time, you sad Kefka reject." The clown was outraged at that statement.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Don't compare me with that upstart!"

"I suppose I shouldn't," Henry shrugged. "He kicked infinitely more ass than you could ever hope to!"

"How so?" the clown growled. Henry turned back to face the clown and started counting off the reasons on his fingers.

"One: he's got a _much_ bigger kill-count than you. Two: he's more dangerous than you, and Three: he's got more memorable one-liners than you! All you have is, 'They all _float_!' Seriously, you have any idea how _old_ that gets after, what…the second time? Now, get outta here, Mister Pound-Foolish, before I call the Orkin Man on your ass!" The clown was now livid.

"I ought to use my Dead Lights on you!" he snarled. Henry remained unfazed as he gave his response.

"Four:" he said, "the Light of Judgment beats your so-called 'Dead Lights' any day of the week." The clown looked bemused at the statement.

"The what?" he said.

They were interrupted by a grotesquely distinct, maniacal cackling from somewhere in the far distance, and the walls of the structure began to shake as a dim light illuminated the room and slowly grew in intensity. Henry and the clown directed their attention upward. "Oh SHIT…" was all the clown could say. Henry immediately dove back out of the room, slammed the door shut and leaned his back up against it in preparation for what was about to happen.

There was a _very _loud explosion from within the torture chamber, the force of which caused the door to bulge outward to an obscene, almost cartoonish degree momentarily as a bit of smoke and dust was forced out through the space between it and the doorway. Then, everything fell back to silence. Curious, Henry turned around and cracked the door open, and the last thing he remembered was thick, billowing smoke pouring out of the room and completely engulfing him.

**Hell Count:** 7  
**Total Hell Count:** 43

**A/N:** That's the longest chapter yet. And the most cameos and references! By the way, I've added some new material to the previous three chapters. Specifically, I included some of the lesser reading material that can be found throughout the game. I decided that, if I'm going to do this, I should do it _right_! So, if you feel like it (it's not absolutely mandatory, but likely good for a few yuks), go ahead and read.


	8. Monkey Bidness

Henry woke up in bed, flailing his arms in an effort to fan away the smoke and dust that weren't there. He soon realized he was back in his own room. "Wow! That last world wasn't even haunt-- I mean, uh…_hainted_!" he said. He then went about the usual business of stashing the notes he'd collected away in his scrapbook before exiting the bedroom.

The first thing he noticed upon stepping into the hallway was the sound of running water coming from his bathroom. "I knew it!" he said under his breath. "Someone _is_ in here!" He decided there was only one thing to be done about it. He went into his kitchenette and retrieved the only appropriate weapon for assaulting people in the shower: a butter knife. Thusly armed with his dull-bladed weapon, he made his way back to the bathroom.

Slowly, he eased the door open, but the hideous creaking of the hinges didn't do much for maintaining stealth on his part, nor did the fact that he was trying to mimic the screechy violin music from _Psycho _as he snuck up on the shower stall. The water was shut off as he approached, but he didn't care. He was going through with his little charade whether circumstances were right or not. With knife grasped firmly in hand, he reached out and threw the curtain open.

There was nobody in the shower, but the tile surface had been completely stained red. "Dammit," Henry grumbled, disappointedly lowering his knife. "Norman beat me to it…" He looked down at the tub, which had a good couple inches of the red fluid in it. "I guess that's what you call a bloodbath," he said wryly. He then noted the smell. "Actually…" he said as he dipped his finger in the fluid and brought it to his mouth to taste. "Hmm… Tomato soup…" he said, then spat. "With just a hint of soap scum." He groped around for the drain, but was surprised to find it was already open. "Aw, hell," he griped, "the drain's clogged…" Being that there was nothing within the extreme limits of his capabilities that he could do to fix the problem, he left the tub of soup for the moment.

The first thing he did upon entering his living room was take note of the distinct absence of any news reports like he'd received every time after stumbling upon the grisly murder scenes he'd played spectator to in the other worlds. "Come on," he said as he made his way over to the stereo, "there's gotta be _something _interesting on!" He pressed the power button, and was greeted with a news report.

"And now, something completely different," the anchorman said. "Police arrested a Mister Suguru Murakoshi today."

"Ah, the director!" Henry said. "I wonder what he's been up to lately…"

"Mister Murakoshi had reportedly been found all nekkid, standing on top of a utility pole while pissing on pedestrians below."

"Behaving suspiciously, as usual," Henry added as he turned off the stereo.

The next thing he did was manage inventory, which was a snap, considering the only thing he had to drop off was the Vigilance Placard. Once that was done, he turned his attention toward the front door, where he noticed another red piece of paper had been slipped underneath. He took it up and read it.

_I've found something really nifty that works against spookables and the like. It came in handy, it did._

_It was a sword stuck into the huge rock (no King Arthur comments, please) in the woods near the orphanage. It's got a slipshod, triangle-shaped hilt with some kind of magical nonsense written on it._

_As a weapon, it's heavy and hard to carry (though I guess that guy with the spiky hair's got it even WORSE, considering the size of his), and the dumb-ass design of the hilt makes it even more awkward to wield. But somehow it changes in response to the spook-victims' aura of migraine. Strike when the sword is energized! Use the Force, Luke! Oh, wait. Wrong bit. Anyway, if you don't give 'em a beatdown first, you can't stick 'em with it._

_As far as I know (and I'm not sure exactly HOW I know…), there are only 5 such swords in existence with that kind of power. It's extremely valuable. I'd hawk 'em off for cash if my life didn't depend on them._

_July 23_

It was then that Henry heard some mumbling going on just outside his room. He decided to investigate and smashed his face against the door to look through the peephole, where he would've seen that an eighteenth handprint had been added to the collection on the far wall had his attention not been immediately drawn to Frank Scanderlund and Irene, who were standing just outside his door.

"How goes it with Room 302?" Irene asked.

"Well…" Frank hesitated, "I, uh, just tried to open it up, but it looks like somethin's, uh…blockin' it from the inside. The tightwad musta barricaded himself, uh…inside, or, uh…somethin'."

"Is there any particular reason you're stammering so much?" Irene demanded.

"Not really," Frank muttered. "Anyway, like I was sayin', this isn't the first time it's happened."

"What? You stammering?" Irene said. Frank sighed.

"No," he said, "the thing with the room!"

"Really…?" Henry said, suddenly interested. "Do tell…"

"You mean…the guy who lived here before…?" Irene guessed. Frank just continued rambling on.

"Yup," he said. "And it wasn't just him, either. There's, uh, somethin' wrong with this whole apartment…" Irene rolled her eyes.

"Gee, that's _really_ reassuring," she said as Frank ducked down out of sight of the peephole for a moment.

"Well," he said, standing back up, "I just slipped a threatening note under his door. If that miser thinks he can get out of paying the rent, he's got another thing coming!" He nodded emphatically. "Don't worry about it too much," he added to Irene. "There are a…lot of strange things in this world…"

"Really…?" Irene said flatly.

"Yep," Frank nodded again. "Like me, for example! I keep an umbilical cord in a box in my room! Lately, it's started to smell god-awful!" Irene was now looking at him with a rather uneasy expression on her face.

"Uhm…wha…?" was all she could manage to say.

"Wait a minute…!" Frank said, suddenly realizing what he'd told her. "I didn't just… Damn…!" He palmed himself in the forehead. "I meant to tell you about my son and his toilet-trawling habits." Irene's jaw dropped. "Tell ya what," Frank said, "just forget I said anything…" And with that, he took off down the hall before anyone could press him on the matter any further. Irene just stood and stared in utter stupefaction for a moment.

"That's almost more disturbing than those weird noises coming from in here," she said as she started moseying along on her way.

"So _that's _what this is all about!" Henry said in light of the recent revelation as he took up the note he'd been slipped. "Forget lowering the rent! Frank's in for one hell of a lawsuit when I get outta here!" He turned and started back, but froze dead in his tracks after the first step. "Waitaminute…!" he said as Frank's words came back to him. "Toilet trawling?" He thought back to that weird guy he'd happened across in the prison. Frank _did _say his son and daughter-in-law went missing in Silent Hill some time ago. Could that possibly have been…? "Nah!" Henry shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought as he regarded the note Frank had slipped beneath his door.

Whatever the threat was, he found he couldn't read it for all the blood smeared all over the paper. Either that or the blood _was_ the threat. Or maybe Frank just got a massive paper cut. Anyway, Henry decided it would look good in his scrapbook and stashed it there with the journal entry he'd just received. Once that was done, he entered his bathroom again.

Sure enough, as he had expected, the Hole had gotten bigger, and he thought he could hear what sounded like a lady sniveling pathetically inside. "Those termites are starting to creep me out…" Henry said as he climbed into the Hole…

--------------------

When he woke up, he found himself at the end of a long alley with a conveniently-placed Hole in the wall to his right. When he looked up to see how high the walls were, he found an open door with a light shining through in the wall at the end of the alley. The only thing was that it was about ten feet above the floor. With no stairs. "Well, _that's _real convenient," he said sarcastically as he started down the alley.

As he went, he could hear some obnoxious squeaking noises, and had he been more attentive, he would've seen numerous gray figures leaping across the alley from the top of one wall to the other. Imagine how badly they could've ambushed him if they hadn't been just as inattentive as he was.

When he got out of the alley, the noise just got louder, and was joined by what sounded like gunshots and grunts of pain. It was as if someone were waging an all-out war against squeaky toys. And losing. And if that weren't strange enough, the layout of wherever he was was really something else. Like the architect was under the influence at the time he'd designed the place, or something.

After descending a few flights of stairs, he found himself on what appeared to be a rooftop. A sign just beyond the guardrail at the edge to the left identified the place as being Hotel South Ashfield. Apparently they had gone under some heavy remodeling since he'd last seen it, but the handiwork was hardly up to Bob Vila standards. But what was _really_ strange was what he saw sitting just a few yards away. "What the hell!" he said as he approached the object in question. Upon further inspection, he found that it was indeed a car. "What's _this_ doing up here on the roof!" he shouted. "Better yet, how the hell did they get it up here!"

"Nwaaaaaaaaaa--" the voice shouting paused long enough to take a breath, "--aaahhhhhh!" The scream drew Henry's attention upward just in time for him to see someone who looked a lot like Dick Crabtree fall from somewhere a great distance above. Actually, it _was _Dick Crabtree; there was no mistaking that ridiculous tie or that obnoxious pink shirt anywhere. Anyway, he fell flat on his face with such great force that he ended up lying sprawled out, half-imbedded face down in the asphalt roof. Then, he peeled his right hand out of the indentation he'd made and, taking a handful of his own hair, yanked his head free. "Ouch! Dammit…" he cursed as he pulled himself out of his self-made full-body mold. "I suddenly remember why I didn't take up bungee jumping…" He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked at the strange surroundings. "Where the hell am I…?"

"There's a sign over there, dumb-ass," Henry muttered in reference to the nearby Hotel South Ashfield sign. This only startled Dick, who wheeled around on him and pointed a revolver right at his face. "Hey!" Henry said, backing off with hands up. "I was just saying…" Dick went from alarmed to relieved.

"Ah, you're a real person…" he said as he shoved the gun back into his belt and stood up.

"You were expecting your imaginary friend?" Henry smirked. Dick responded by drawing his revolver again and sticking it in Henry's face faster than he could say Clint Eastwood. "Just kidding! Just kidding!" he said.

"Let's try this again," Dick said, pocketing the gun again. "Ah, you're a real person…"

"Yeah," Henry said, then quickly turned away. There was a plainly audible spitting noise before he turned back and offered a handshake with a grin so toothy it was like a neon sign announcing that he was up to something along the lines of no good. "My name's Henry…"

"I'm Dick Crabtree, from 207," Dick replied, ignoring the handshake. "What the hell's happened to us?" he continued as Henry disappointedly wiped his hand on his pant leg. "That hole, and this world…it's like a really bad White Claudia trip…" A light bulb suddenly appeared over his head and somehow turned on without electricity before vanishing. "I got it!" he said. "If you're here too, then that means the entire apartment building's screwed up!" Henry threw his hands into the air.

"Brilliant deduction, Holmes!" he said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "I'll bet you figured that out all by yourself!" Dick nodded in affirmation.

"That's right!" he replied with a huge, self-satisfied grin. "My detective skills are second to none! That's another reason why everybody calls me Dick!"

"I think I can guess what the other reason is," Henry muttered under his breath. He once again found himself staring down the barrel of a revolver. "I mean, I didn't say anything!" he quickly amended.

"Anyway," Dick said as he shoved his gun back into his belt, "I'll bet this explains what happened to that other guy." This statement piqued Henry's interest.

"Who is this 'other guy' of whom you speak?" he inquired. Dick rolled his eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh.

"The guy who lived in 302 before you!" he said. "Boy, you're real dim, aren't ya?"

"Don't change the subject!" Henry said. "What about that guy?"

"A journalist…" Dick said. "He disappeared one day. Holed himself up in his room towards the end, got all crazy and stuff… Just like you." Henry took offense at this and made as if to draw a pistol on Dick, who reflexively threw his hands up to shield his face. After a brief moment, he lowered his hands just enough to take a look at the threat, but was amused to find that Henry was only pointing his finger at him. "Sure that finger's loaded?" he said, pointing at Henry's weapon of choice with one hand while the other fell to his side. Henry just sulked as he slowly lowered his hand and shoved it into his pocket. "Anyway, I'm gettin' the hell outta here!" Dick said, jerking his thumbs to the side in the direction of a nearby door. "You should too -- if you know what's good for ya." Henry felt affronted.

"Oh, a threat!" he demanded, readying his pipe. He was about to chase him down and hit him over the head when he suddenly noticed something funny. The words BAD MAN were spelled out across the back of Dick's shirt in large black letters with white trim. "Bad man?" he sniggered. Dick shot him a hostile look over his shoulder.

"You say somethin'?" he snapped.

"I, uh…" he desperately fumbled for a recovery. "Watch out for that kid," he said. Dick just gave him a dismissive gesture and went on about whatever it is he does all day.

The loud squeaking suddenly picked back up once Dick had left. Henry didn't know why, but the noise had been considerate enough to stop while he and Dick had their conversation. He didn't have time to consider that much before something jumped down to his level. Two somethings, actually. Henry wasn't quite sure what they were. They looked like George C. Scott if he were a gray-skinned, bowlegged, knuckle-dragging steroid freak with a latex glove pulled over his head and a huge goiter. Not only that, but they were hooting like monkeys with oboe reeds in place of vocal cords. Something about the inquisitive way they looked at him disturbed Henry; perhaps because their entire heads bent in the middle instead of hinging on the vertebrae when cocked to the side. Henry didn't bother to ask questions, he just readied his pipe and swung straight at the skull of the first one to approach.

The pipe struck the thing in the temple, the creaturesnarling in painas it sustained the blow. Its head stretched out a bit as it was knocked to the side, and then snapped back in place, where it bobbled and bounced a bit on its shoulders, almost as though it were made of rubber. As amusing as that was to see, Henry decided to brace himself for the expected retaliation, but was taken completely off guard by how the Rubber Head responded. Instead of smacking him around, the thing just started doing the Funky Chicken, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Henry assumed it was mocking him and decided to teach it a lesson by further assaulting it. This prompted the Rubber Head to take a swipe at him in retribution, and from there it deteriorated to the two of them mindlessly exchanging blows. This continued for a while, and Henry eventually emerged the victor in the skirmish of attrition, if only for the fact that the Rubber Head couldn't always decide whether to taunt him or hit him in return for the blows he delivered.

Once he delivered his mighty boot-stomp to the prone Rubber Head, Henry celebrated his victory by pumping his pipe in the air and grunting like a deranged howler monkey. He then realized his celebration was premature and turned to face the other Rubber Head, which had been polite enough not to interfere with or ambush him while he was occupied. But now that its partner was dead, it decided to take a tentative offensive and started walking, rather waddling in his direction. "Ah, screw it!" Henry said, deciding he was too tired to go another round and therefore opting to try out his newest weapon. He withdrew the stun gun from his pocket and pressedthe electrodesagainst the surviving Rubber Head's goiter.

**ZORCH!**

The ape-thing dropped like a sack of fertilizer and, after delivering the obligatory stomp, Henry was finally able to gain access to the door it had been guarding.

**Hell Count:** 6  
**Total Hell Count:** 49

**A/N:** I hope Hometown notices my fic soon. I've decided I'd like to dedicate it to her.


	9. Spoiled Sports

Henry had entered a short corridor, and in the room just a few steps ahead, he could hear something strange, like someone trying to hawk a really big loogie. "What the hell is that noise!" he irritably demanded as he entered the room. He found himself to be in a kitchen, festively furnished with streamers strung from the light fixture above the table, on which sat a not-so-colorfully decorated cake and a bottle of champagne among other things. No, it wasn't a party thrown in celebration of the fiftieth use of the H-word, it looked more like it was intended for a birthday party. Ignoring the blandly-colored accoutrements, Henry made his way around the table, where he found the source of the funky noise to be a figure lying prone on the floor. It was like a rather lanky man wearing a green sweatshirt, and he was soiled with a copious amount of dirt from head to toe. Not only that,he seemed to be pinned down by a blade with a poorly-crafted hilt stuck in his gut.

The figure suddenly stopped hawking as soon as it noticed Henry. "All right!" he rasped. "Finally, someone to help me out!" He gestured to Henry. "You! Would you mind pulling this thing outta me?" Henry regarded him in bewilderment.

"How can you still be alive if you've got that thing shoved through you?" He had a sudden thought. "Saaay," he said, suddenly suspicious, "you wouldn't happen to be one of those spookables I've read about lately, are you?" The figure hesitated.

"Uhhh…" he stammered, "whatever gave you that idea?" Henry examined the sword impaling the figure.

"I find this thing in your gut matches the description of a thingy that's supposed to hold ghosts down." The figure got shifty-eyed.

"Well," he said after a moment, "you wouldn't be able to move either if you had this thing sticking through you and into the floorboards!"

"True…" Henry said, thoughtfully considering the figure's argument. "But, I wouldn't need to be held down," he added, "seein' as how I'd be, y'know…_dead_, and stuff…"

"But I'm not giving you a headache," the figure said. "Ghosts give you headaches, right?" The figure did have a point, though Henry still had some serious doubts about the whole situation. "Look, just do me this one favor," the figure in question said. "I'll give you this key," he added, holding up a key he had been clutching in his hand the whole time. Henry watched, spellbound by the shiny object as the ghost shook it in a hypnotic manner. "So make like King Arthur already!"

"Okay!" Henry said. He fixed his grip on the stupidly-designed hilt and yanked the blade out of the figure's stomach. "Now, gimme m'key!" he said, holding his hand out expectantly.

It was then that the figure rose from the floor and levitated a good several inches above it, revealing himself to be a ghost after all. "SUCKER!" he shouted triumphantly.

"What!" Henry bellowed, outraged that someone would be so treacherous, so malevolent, so impolite as to lie to him! "You tricked me!"

"That's right!" the ghost said. "No key for you!"

"Then I'll just have to _take_ it!" Henry said as he touched the electrodes of his stun gun to the ghost.

**ZORCH!**

The ghost didn't give any visible reaction. "NO!" Henry shouted. "The batteries _can't _be dead already…!"

"Fool!" the ghost laughed derisively, feeling empowered by Henry's hapless efforts. "Your high-voltage weapon is useless against me! Now, feel the wrath of my migraine-inducing ill will!" Henry's countenance quickly turned from devastation to bemusement as he stood there, looking at the backstabber floating before him. "Come on!" the ghost said. "Don't you feel the slightest thing!"

"Well, I _do _feel something warm vibrating in my pocket," Henry said as he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his large Tylenol tablet, which was radiating a strange, pulsating aura as it shuddered in his hand.

"Well, damn…" the ghost said disappointedly. "I guess that explains why _I'm _getting the unbearable throbbing sensation in my head…" Henry looked at the ghost.

"You are?" he ventured. The ghost threw its arms out in frustration.

"Are you kidding!" he shouted. "I feel like I've got a hell of a hangover!" He shook his head as though he actually thought that would lessen the intense throbbing in his skull. "Well, screw it!" he said. "I'll just do this the old fashioned way!" With that, he floated right up to Henry and bit him.

"OWWW!" Henry shouted as the ghost sank its teeth deep into his chest. He struggled until he finally dislodged the ghost from his being and roughly shoved it away. The ghost, however, was not deterred.

"Hey, lemme bite ya!" he said as he renewed his advance.

"Sorry, I don't swing that way!" Henry replied as he wound up for a charge hit with his pipe. "I swing _this _way!" And with that, Henry let fly on him with a massive blow that knocked the ghost back and sent it flying through the wall, leaving a big patch of black, viscous goop on the surface.

Henry approached the stain on the wall and, upon closer examination, found the key the ghost had been holding was now stuck in the middle. This made sense, seeing as it was an actual solid object and, therefore, incapable of phasing through walls. "I'll take _that_!" he said as he snatched the key. He got some of the sludge on his fingers as he did, and it gave him some rather interesting sensations. "It kinda feels tingly there…" he noted. "Oh wait a minute, it's stinging! It STINGS! IT _STINGS_!" Henry proceeded to run around and scream bloody murder at the pain searing his fingers until, after a moment, the sludge vanished without a trace. Anyway, after pocketing his newly-acquired key and the funky-looking sword he'd pulled out of the ghost, he decided to be on his way before anything else happened to piss him off.

He approached the exit, but when he tried the doorknob, it wouldn't turn. It was locked. "Now how the hell am I supposed to get through!" He then remembered and reached into his pocket. "Da key!" he said with emphasis as he held up said object. He then used the key to unlock the door, allowing him to _finally _open the door. He was about to pass through when he froze in his tracks, having apparently remembered something all of a sudden. He turned back and approached the table, where he took the champagne bottle, removed the cork and took a large swig before setting it back down and exiting the room.

He then found himself in a deep shaft in the building's interior, the perimeter lined by what looked like a fire escape and construction scaffolding. The first thing he noticed was a strange droning noise, something like a cross between a stomach churning and flatulence. He followed the noise to a wall that looked like a White Claudia trip captured on canvas in white and red and various shades of electric pink. It was on this work of modern art that he found the apparent source of the noise: a bunch of what looked like Graboidites slithering about on the wall, except unlike those from the prison, these were pinkish, and un-segmented. Of course, Henry didn't care; they all smooshed the same. "All right! More free kills!" he rejoiced as he swatted the Graboidites off the wall and onto the walkway. "Here comes my foot!" he announced as he brought the heel of his boot crashing down on top of the slug-like creatures, smearing their strawberry-flavored innards all over the walkway. He continued his massacre of the defenseless Graboidites, right down to the very last one. It was when he knocked the last one off the strange work of art that the churning, flatulent buzzing noise _finally _stopped. "So much for your rude bodily functions!" Henry taunted as he dispatched the last survivor writhing on the ground. "That'll teach you to fart in _my _general direction!"

"Hey, party crasher!" a familiar voice shouted at him from behind. Henry turned around to see a familiar-looking figure floating up to him.

"Oh, it's you," Henry said as the Tylenol tablet in his pocket began to react to the ghost's aura. "What do you want?"

"To know what you're doing harassing the local wildlife!" the ghost spat. "That'd be nice!" Henry backed away from the ghost as it menacingly encroached on him.

"What, are you some sort of park ranger, or something?" he demanded.

"No," the ghost replied, "but I figured that was as good an excuse as any to kick your ass!"

"Not if I kick yours first!" Henry said, winding up a charge hit. "TASTE THE RUST!" he shouted as he unleashed another broadside on the ghost's head, laying it flat just long enough for him to make a break for it the rest of the way down the fire escape, where he passed through a door at the bottom.

He was now in a short alley, completely enclosed within four brick walls that only allowed him to advance left, an eerie red glow cast on the confined space by a red light on what looked like a fuse box on the wall at the end of the alley to the left. It seemed the only way out was a door just to the left on the wall Henry was facing, so the next course of action was a no-brainer, even for him.

Unfortunately, he soon realized that he was far from safe, for upon assessing the situation, his Tylenol tablet started reacting again as a familiar-looking black splotch appeared on the wall beside the door. "Guess who's back!" the petulant ghost shouted as he pulled himself out of the gunk on the wall.

"Not you!" Henry answered as he pummeled it to no end once more with his pipe, keeping it at bay just long enough to reach the door, which he immediately ducked through. He was safe for the moment, but one thing was made annoyingly clear to Henry: his pipe would only do so much against the ghosts, and that obviously wasn't going to cut it in the long run. Henry made this observation with one pointed comment. "I'm gonna need a bigger bludgeoning implement," he said.

He found himself standing in what looked like a storage room, with shelves strewn haphazardly about. They didn't have much on them, but one of them had a strange, flesh-colored mat laid out on it, which Henry only took passing notice of, though not visually. "What…the…hell…?" he said. "Something reeks! It's so bad I just got possessed by William Shatner!" He decided not to hang around and made his way over to the door just ahead on the right. Inside, he found himself in what looked very much like a small sporting goods store. The selection seemed rather limited, though, and aside from that, the place was a mess. It looked like it had either been the site of another soccer hooligan brawl, or a wild after-Super Bowl party had gotten out of hand there.

The first thing that Henry found was a number of bats lined up against the opposite wall. "Sweet deal!" he said as he strode up and took a bat. He was sorely disappointed to find it was only plastic. "Dammit!" he shouted. "Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!" He was frustrated so much that he started beating a broken shelf nearby with the bat. "Damn wiffleball! And damn whoever came up with the wretched game!" Once the bat was bent beyond repair from several impacts against the broken shelf (which sustained no damage from his tantrum), he flung it down and kicked it across the floor.

Henry decided to take a moment to calm down, and looked around the store for anything else that might be useful. He noted the layout as he scoped out the store. There were some broken shelves, the row of plastic bats leaned against the wall, a bin of volleyballs, some shirts with the words "Crappy Crickets!" on them hanging up on display in the back, and a number of golf bags lined up along the wall. And, right beside the door he'd entered through, was a Hole.

He wandered about the shop for the purposes of making his search relatively thorough. Unfortunately, most of the golf bags were empty, and the only one that wasn't only had broken golf clubs. When he started toward the other side of the store, he stepped on something that rolled beneath his boot, taking his feet with it as they suddenly slipped out from underneath him. This resulted in Henry demonstrating himself to be a prime example of unparalleled grace as he fell flat on his back and nearly killed himself.

Immediately he bolted upright, intent on punishing whatever inanimate object dared to make him look foolish when, lo and behold, his eyes fell upon another golf club lying on the badly scuffed linoleum floor. "Well, at least I found _something_," he shrugged, his anger quickly dissipating as he stood to his feet and took up the golf club to inspect. It was a 5-iron. "All right!" he said, thrilled at having found another golf club he hadn't yet added to his collection. "I think I'll dedicate a song to my new 5-iron," he said. Then, after clearing his throat, he raised the club above his head and started swinging it around as he marched around the store and began to sing, which couldn't really be described as singing so much as shouting at the top of his lungs.

"_When I go out  
__I play in the street  
__I get hit by cars  
__I make mashed potatoes  
__I get hit by CARS!"_

Henry froze in his tracks when his foot bumped into something heavy, and when he looked down, he saw a bat rolling on the floor. He would've dismissed it were it not for the weight he felt, and the noise he distinctly recalled hearing when his foot struck it: the unmistakable ring of metal. Filled with new hope, he immediately took up the bat and found it was notably cool to the touch, and the fact that it did indeed have considerably more weight than its plastic brethren confirmed that it was indeed made of good ol' solid aluminum. "Yeeeeeeeeeah!" he said, giving his new weapon a few practice swings. "Now we're talkin'!" Now that he had something a bit more substantial with which to hit things, he decided the time had come to retire his pipe of destruction and made his way over to the Hole.

--------------------

Henry woke up and got out of bed. First of all, he breathed deep and felt as the invigorating air of his room soothed the bruises he'd sustained in his numerous sorties against the marauding Rubber Heads and that obnoxious ghost. Once his health gauge was full, he dashed out of his room. The first thing he did was to proceed into the living room and straight to his storage chest of infinite capacity to manage inventory, which was pretty much a snap. After depositing his pipe and the stupid sword, he went about the usual business of stalking the neighbors. "Let's see what's showing this time on Peephole Theater…" he said as he approached the door.

He peered through the peephole and saw Frank Scanderlund out in the hall, raising his voice and waving his arms all around. Yet another argument in the public domain of the hallway, as was usual for South Sootfield Heights. Henry would've loved to stay and watch, but not being able to make out what was being shouted depreciated the experience and made it rather dull. All he could figure was that, judging by how much Frank was flailing his arms, he was probably having an argument with an aerobics instructor or something."All right then," he said, deciding to switch observation posts. "Let's go and see what's on the Irene Channel."

He went over to the hole in his wall, where he knelt down and looked into Irene's room, where he saw Irene sitting on her bed and watching the tube again. She sure was gasping a lot at irregular intervals. Either she was easily startled by horror movies, or she had a case of the hiccups. Henry realized it was probably the latter at one moment when she momentarily turned away and grunted in disgust.After a few moments of this, something elsewhere suddenly caught Irene's attention, and she sprang off the bed and dashed out of the room.

Being that there was apparently nothing left to see at the moment, Henry then returned to his bathroom again, and crawled back through the Hole into the alternate world…  
--------------------

**Hell Count:** 4  
**Total Hell Count:** 53

**A/N:** Big bonus points to anyone who knows why Henry picked that particular song to dedicate to his golf club. And as for what Henry _should've _seen through the peephole, don't worry, I'm getting to that…


	10. New Jerk City

Henry found himself once again in the sports shop. Being that he'd already taken what was worth taking without paying, he decided to be on his way before anyone could drop in on him and repossess his newly acquired weapons. "Let's see what's behind Door #1," he said as he approached one of the two doors in the corner.

He tried to turn the handle, but the door was locked. "All right," he said, readying his bat, "I'll just have to break it down!" He took a swing and hit his mark, the aluminum clanking loudly with the impact as the bat shook in his grip. However, much to Henry's surprise, the solid aluminum hadn't made a mark on the door, nor had it even bounced off. Somehow, it had magically phased through the passive barrier before him. Baffled, Henry looked from the door to the bat and back again. "What the hell?" he said. He decided to try again, but to the same effect. A ring of metal and the vibration of impact, but still the metal somehow phased through the solid door. Henry lowered the bat and heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Damn," he griped. "Must be those physical limits of the pixilated environment…" With a shrug, he tried the other door which, to his delight, was open.

He was in another indoor fire escape, the top-level hemmed in by chain link fencing. As he descended the fire escape, he vaguely wondered why it was indoors. After all, the purpose of a fire escape was to get one _out_ of a building, right? "Someone _really_ needs to punish the architect for his gross indiscretion," Henry said as he passed through the door at the bottom.

He found himself in another room, and the first thing he noticed was the telltale sound of Whiffies padding about; three of them, if he wasn't mistaken. He readied his bat and looked just in time to see one of the rotting, mange-ridden dogs dragging its tongue on the linoleum floor as it came out from behind a shelf. Henry gave a shrill whistle. "Here boy!" he called. "Come on, I got somethin' for ya!" He continued to beckon it in the most annoying manner as he swatted the large end of the bat against his palm in anticipation. The Whiffy, taking offense at Henry's stereotyping, immediately lunged at him with jaws wide open, intent on clamping them down on his leg in an effort to get him to shut up.

**SMACK!**

The Whiffy yelped in pain as it was knocked out of the air with a strike from a heavy metal object. Henry shouldered the bat, laughing with evil glee as he walked up to deliver the coup de grace. "Stee-rahhhk ONE!" he shouted in his best umpirial dialect as he brought the sole of his boot smashing down on the dog's throat.

He had just removed his foot from the rotting corpse when another dog, alerted by the ruckus, dashed out from around the corner. Unfortunately, it slipped in its dead comrade's drool, and ended up sliding into the wall with enough force to stun it. This provided Henry with another free kill. "Stee-rahhhk TWO!" he shouted as he brought his bat crashing down on the dog's skull.

He went further into the room in an effort to find the final Whiffy, and when he didn't immediately find it, he decided to take a brief moment to scan his new surroundings. The room was filled with shelves arranged parallel to one another, forming aisles like in a store. The shelves were stocked with various things, primarily dog and cat food and cages and stuff. "Looks like a pet store," he said, once again showing how sharp his skills of deduction weren't. "It's enough food for an army of cats…" He was suddenly grateful that he was alone, for he would've died of humiliation if anyone had been there to hear it. The only one that could've possibly heard it was the Whiffy, which he was going to kill anyway, so that problem was as good as solved.

He started slowly down one of the pet food-stocked aisles, bat held ready in anticipation of a hostile encounter. When he got to the end, he peered around the corner of the shelf just in time to see the last Whiffy wandering aimlessly out from behind the counter. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a box of dog biscuits off the shelf, opened it and withdrew something made of metal. "Huh, a prize…" he said as he inspected the item in his hand. It was a key, and the tag attached to it had the words "Abbot's Sports" printed on it. He recalled the locked door in the sports shop and decided that was his next stop. But first, he had to take care of the Whiffy, the sole ear-witness to his mortifyingly stupid statement. He reached back into the box and this time withdrew a cliché bone-shaped biscuit. With treat in hand, he leaned out from behind the shelf and called out to the dog. "Hey! Over here, boy!" he called out in a patronizing tone, giving a few rapid whistles as he waved the biscuit in the air. "Over here! Look what I got for ya!" The Whiffy immediately took notice of the proffered item and, without thinking, took off in Henry's direction, panting in eager anticipation of receiving a stale treat.

Henry ducked back behind the shelf, and the dog was just about to round the corner when the sudden appearance of an aluminum bat in its face halted its advance and sent it sprawling on the ground. Triumphantly, Henry came striding back out from behind the shelf and approached the spasm-wracked canine on the floor. "Stee-rahhhk THREE!" he shouted as he put the disgusting mutt out of its misery. "YOU'RE OUTTA THERE!" he shouted as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder for emphasis.

Henry set the end of the bat on the floor and leaned on it as he took a deep breath. "Smoke if ya got 'em, boys!" he said as he raised the biscuit in his hand to his mouth and took a bite. He chewed leisurely for a moment, trying to ignore how dry and bland it was when dawning realization suddenly caused his jaw to slowly lose momentum. He had just stopped chewing and stood there for a moment before bringing the object in question up before his face for inspection. Sure enough, he was clutching half a bone-shaped dog biscuit in his hand, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened to the other half.

Henry just stood there, staring expressionless at the biscuit before letting his hand fall back to his side and shooting one of those plaintive, well-ain't-that-a-bitch looks at nothing in particular. He then proceeded to empty the partially-chewed material from his mouth, spewing the fragments with enough force to launch them at an escape velocity that could rival that of a number of spitballs expertly packed into a paper towel tube for a scatter shot effect. "Ugh! That's _awful_!" he shouted, tossing down the last bit of biscuit so he could grab his throat. "Ick! Awful! Horrible food!" His exaggerated melodramatics abruptly halted, and he brought his hand up to his mouth to lick the crumbs from his fingers. "Maybe with a little ketchup…"

Unfortunately for Henry, the biscuit particles he'd spewed from his mouth happened to pepper a number of Nail Bats that had been snoozing peacefully on the wall behind the counter. The Nail Bats responded with fury as they left their resting spot and immediately homed in on Henry. "Eyaaaaarrrgh!" he shouted under the relentless poking of the pointy proboscises. He took his bat and immediately started swinging away, but once again, he was unable to hit any of the targets. He decided it wasn't worth the health loss and made a quick dash for the door in the small alcove next to the counter.

He found himself in what looked like an office, complete with cubicles and desks with PCs and everything, even an eyesore of a clock on the far wall. It was a completely normal office with one exception – everything was upside down. Everything except that clock on the far wall, that is. "What the hell…?" he said. "I have _really_ got to ease up on the White Claudia…" He wandered around on the ceiling, but upon finding no other way out, returned to the point of entrance. Unfortunately, his bewilderment at the upside-down status of the room he was in caused his short term memory to lapsed, and he'd forgotten about the angry swarm of Nail Bats inside the pet shop. And, being the dipstick he is, he wasted several moments in another unsuccessful attempt to swat them down. After losing a mildly laughable amount of health, he finally made it back to the store entrance where dashed back out the door and quickly slammed it shut behind him.

He stood there, heaving for breath as he leaned back against the door, almost as though he were afraid the Nail Bats would break free of their pet store prison. "This exotic pets thing has gotten _way _out of hand…" he said before ascending the fire escape and returning to the store known as Abbot's Sports, where he immediately put his newly acquired key to use on the locked door.

He exited onto yet another fire escape, except this one was outside. "Architect _finally_ did something right for a change!" he said. He could hear the hooting of Rubber Heads below him, but he confided in his new weapon of choice's ability to crack some skulls, be they rubber or otherwise.

He was not, however, prepared for the abrupt sound of something landing on the platform behind him. "WHOA, MAMA!" he shouted at the top of his lungs as he wheeled around to face a Rubber Head that had apparently jumped down from the building's roof. Fortunately for Henry, the stupid ape-like thing had its back turned to him, giving him the preemptive. Not wasting any time, he immediately pulled out his stun gun. "Take _this_, ya missing link!" he shouted as he touched the electrodes to the thing's ass.

**ZORCH!**

The creature immediately went limp and did a faceplant on the grated walkway, providing Henry with all the opportunity he needed to finish it off with a boot-stomp. "Evolution sucks…" he muttered as he proceeded to the stairs. He had to take a few swings at some ascending Rubber Heads, but that only made it more fun, because they had a tendency to go bouncing down the stairs like grossly malformed tires when he knocked them down, and they snarled as they crashed against each individual step on the way down. "Aw yeah! I'm cool…" Henry declared as he made his way to the bottom.

He stepped out onto a rooftop, where he saw two more Rubber Heads waiting for him. One of them, however, was different. It had a reddish tint like blood smeared about on its body, and the skin over its goiter had apparently been ripped off, giving it the appearance of a monkey's ass. He christened the oddity the Assface and immediately set to work on bludgeoning them. Unfortunately, the Assface wasn't quite as passive as its Rubber Head counterpart, and it took numerous potshots at him while he tried to deal with the less colorful of the two. Several blows and even more salty words later, the two ape-things had had enough and fell to the pavement, where Henry stomped their lights out.

Now that the riffraff had been disposed of, he made his way along, following the roof as it led around a corner onto a ledge to the left, above which was a bright yellow neon sign. "Re…" Henry feebly attempted to pronounce the words as they glowed their cheerful yellow light. "Re… Res… Restur…" He had a good deal of trouble until he tilted his head to the right. "Oh! I get it!"

R  
e  
s  
t  
a  
u  
r  
a  
n  
t

F  
U  
S  
E  
L  
I

"They spelled it sideways," Henry noted as he tilted his head back to the upright position and made his way out onto the ledge hugging the wall.

As he went along, he paused to take a quick glance over the edge, where he saw a small, fenced-in alley several feet below. The bizarre effects it had on his depth perception were not unlike that of a video camera having its zoom feature abused by a hyperactive twelve year old. "Wow," he said, pressing his back against the wall, "kinda like that movie directed by that fat Britishguy's silhouette."

He continued to edge along until he got to a pair of elevator doors. The first one he came to wouldn't open, so that left the second and last one, which did. "All right!" he said. He hadn't even turned to press the button when he noticed a pair of doors on the other side. "Hey!" he said as he approached the other side of the elevator, "I wonder what's past these?" Of course, he should've been able to see, considering the doors were wire mesh, but then again, he needed an excuse to go poking his nose were it probably didn't belong.

He exited the elevator into what appeared to be a long service corridor. "I wonder what's down here?" he said. Then, suddenly getting an idea, he cupped his hands around his mouth. "HELLO!" he shouted, then waited.

"_hello!"_ came the faint echo a brief moment later.

Amused, Henry did it again. "HELLO!" he shouted, and again, there was an echo. Another thought struck him, and he cupped his hands around his mouth again. "HENRY TOWNSHEND IS A REALLY HANDSOME GUY!"

"_thanks!"_ the echo responded.

"What the hell…?" Henry started, baffled at how the echo didn't come even remotely close to what he'd just said, but he couldn't figure out why it would do that, so he just started down the corridor to see what might be at the end. "This might be interesting…!" he said, filled with anticipation as he rounded the corner to the right.

**GROOOOAAAAN!**

That sound stopped Henry dead in his tracks. He had heard that unearthly groaning before, and where he heard that, he inevitably encountered annoying dead things not long after. "Okay, maybe I'd just better keep walking…" he said, doing just that.

**GROOOOAAAAN!**

"Jogging…!" he said, increasing his pace a bit.

**GROOOOAAAAN!**

"RUNNING…!" he said, once again increasing the speed and length of his stride as he rounded the next corner.

**GROOOOAAAAN!**

"_SPRINTING_…!" He rounded the last corner at a full blown dash, but was soon forced to stop when the last length of corridor terminated at a solid wall. "DEAD END!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"_sucks to be you!" _his voice echoed.

Henry wheeled around and began to stomp his way back down the corridor when he felt his foot come down on something other than the floor with the first step. He looked down and noticed another one of those funky-hilted swords under his foot. "All right!" he said as he took up the sword. "I'll take this!" He had just deposited it in his pocket when he suddenly noticed something else on the floor: a shovel. "Two for one!" he said as he took up the tool. "All right! Another poorly-constructed sword and a spade!"

"Excuse me!" a voice said behind him in a rather irritated tone, and Henry turned around to see a figure he had last seen beaten up in an old subway car.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Where'd you come from?"

"Through that wall," the black guy in the sweater vest jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the large black patch of sludge on the dead end wall.

"And what do you want?"

"I _demand_ to know why you use racially disparaging terms, like 'spade'!" the ghost declared. Henry gave him the most utterly annoyed look ever.

"I was talking about this _shovel_!" he said, emphasizing the final word as he held up said tool. "Otherwise known as a spade, or didn't you know that?" The ghost's insulted countenance was replaced by one of surprised discovery.

"Oh…" he said. "Then it _wasn't _a racial slur?"

"No, I have _nothing_ against black people as a community or as a race," Henry said. "Therefore, it can't be considered a hate crime when I beat you up for trying to pull a Jessie Jackass on me!" With that, he immediately brought the head of the shovel crashing down on the ghost's skull, sending the victim reeling before continuing to beat the un-living bejeezus out of him.

"Rodney King! RODNEY KING!" the ghost hollered above the sickening rhythm of pain Henry was pounding out on his dead body. The thuds of impact and the crunching of breaking bone filled the corridor until the ghost finally succumbed to the onsloaught and fell prone on the ground.

"Black, white…" Henry said, resting the edge of the shovelhead on the dead guy's belly. "I'm the guy with the arsenal in his pants." Then, just for good measure, he drove the shovelhead into the ghost's gut with his foot, which rewarded him with that noisy death rattle the undead pests tended to emit when struck. He couldn't help but comment on his actions after standing there dumbly for a moment afterward. "God, that was violent…" he said.

"MO-THA-FUCKA!" another voice shouted from behind, and Henry turned around to see some weasly-looking punk in a red jacket and ski cap come floating down the corridor. "Da hell you doin' to my dealer!"

"Dealer?" Henry echoed, not understanding what the fuss was about.

"Yeah, foo'! My dealer! He hooks me up wit' my shit fix, yo!" Henry arced an eyebrow.

"So he sells you Pepto-Bismol?" he said. "You can get that at any grocery store!" The ghost responded by getting all up in is face.

"Yo, ease off!" the ghetto-wannabe snapped at him. "You best be gettin' on outta here, 'cuz you be steppin', yo!"

"That's right," Henry replied belligerently, shoving the ghost away. "I be steppin' all over your dead ass if you don't get your rancid funk away me!"

"Oh, you think you slick, you punk-ass, blasphemous, dope-fiend bitch!" the hood challenged. Henry raised his hand in a halting gesture.

"All right, stop right there," he said. "If you start bragging about how many times or how often you got your 'jimmy' 'whacked' recently--"

"Every day!" the hooligan declared proudly.

"What?"

"I had _my _jimmy whacked seven times last week!" the goon repeated. Henry's face scrunched with annoyance.

"Really?" he said, pulling out his baseball bat. "Well, how 'bout I whack it for the first time _this _week?" The punk put some distance between the two of them.

"Back da fuck up!" he shouted. "Idunno _what _team you be battin' for--"

"I'm straight as an arrow, thank you," Henry said. "I didn't use 'whack' as innuendo so much as I meant it in the literal sense." The ghost gave him a strange look.

"Da hell you talkin' 'bout, bitch!"

"ENGLISH, MOFO!" Henry shouted. "DO YOU SPEAK IT!"

"_Now _you talkin' my language!" the hood said, finally noting some familiar terminology.

"Then pay attention, you pant-sagging sockhead!" Henry said. "When I say 'whack', I mean I'm going to pound your 'inheritance' into Figgie pudding!" Then, before the ghost could react, Henry immediately launched into his usual assault, which landed two over-the-shoulder strikes right on the kid's crotch.

"OH!" the punk cried, holding his crotch as he slowly descended to the floor and fell flat on his back. Henry finished the three-hit combo with an overhead bash right to the same area. "Oh, right in the Mean Bean Machine…!"

"Roshambo!" Henry shouted as he raised his foot and brought it stamping down on the kid's crotch again. "That means to kick you squa' in the nuts…" he said as he shouldered the bat and started back down the corridor. "Give 'jimmy' my regards."

He had just gotten up to the elevator door and was about to step inside when he suddenly felt what must've been fingernails digging themselves into his ass. "YEEEOOOOOWW!" he shouted as he leapt away from whatever was assaulting his rear end. He then wheeled around to see none other than the black ghost he'd just beaten down at the other end of the hallway.

"Damn, man!" the ghost cursed. "Don't you carry a wallet with you!"

"What the hell are you rooting around for my wallet for!" Henry shouted. The ghost merely pulled a small plastic bag filled with suspicious-looking shreds of dried leaves out of his pocket.

"To pay for this damaged 'merchandise'," he replied. "I had intended to sell it to the junkie you assaulted a moment ago. That is, I was going to until you went and tainted it with blood and everything!"

"It's not _my _problem!" Henry shrugged.

"Oh, but it _is_!" the ghost replied. "See, I was supposed to use that loot for a few rounds of poker tonight! But seeing as how I can't make the sale due to _your _actions, you owe me reparations!"

"You know something? You're right!" Henry said. The ghost gave a surprised start.

"You actually agree with me?" he asked.

"Yes, I do!" Henry said in an all-too-acquiescent tone. "I know just how to rectify the situation." Before the ghost could react, a swing from Henry's bat connected with his temple, laying him flat once again. "See?" Henry said. "Problem solved." He then proceeded to the elevator, muttering something about "damned 'legitimate businessmen'" as the doors closed him in. No sooner had this happened than the other ghost he'd beaten up arrived on the scene. The punk noticed the first ghost lying on the floor, then hovered over his prone form with an idiotic grin plastered on his face.

"Man, you got knocked da fuck out!" he said. He was so focused on the other ghost that he hadn't noticed that Henry had hit the elevator's "Door Open" button for the express purpose of bringing the head of his newly-acquired spade crashing down on his skull (that is to say, the ghost's skull; if I'd meant Henry's, I'd have typed "his own skull" instead).

"Stupid spooks…" Henry muttered as the elevator doors closed him in again, leaving the two ghosts laid flat on the concrete floor of the corridor.

"Nice going, wigger," the black ghost said.

"You shuts da hell up!" the punk replied.

--------------------

**Hell Count: **7  
**Total Hell Count:** 60

**A/N:** Probably the most politically incorrect chapter yet. Hopefully nobody found any of the material to be offensive in nature, for its use was purely facetious. I also hope the ghetto reject's words pass as ebonics. At least the stuff I _didn't _rip from cinema about the 'hood.


	11. Lots of Ups and Downs

Henry shouldered the spade as the doors shut him inside the elevator. "Now," he said, turning to approach the button panel on the other side, "let's be on our way."

He was about to press the button when he felt something tug on his pant leg. When he looked, he saw the diaper-wearing green duck he'd seen in the prison.

"I push the button," the duck said. "No you push the button, _I_ push the button."

"Knock yourself out, kid," Henry said as he stepped aside and let the strange kid approach. "Bottom floor, please."

The duck stood on his tiptoes, reached up and pressed the button for the bottom floor. "Elelator go down the hooole!" he said as the elevator began its descent.

Henry saw many strange things through the grated door on the way down. A large, fleshy creature from a dream that not even a kid could believe in, a shadowy figure walking on the wall behind a large industrial ventilation fan, you know…the usual stuff. Then Henry saw something he didn't expect, something unbecomingly ordinary: he saw Dick Crabtree confronting the kid.

"Are you that kid he was ramblin' on about?" Dick asked the kid. "You live in that nut-house apartment too, huh?" The kid didn't say anything; just stood there and stared up at the ruffian looming over him.

Dick seemed to have a sudden realization. "Say…" he said, his tone growing harsher, "you look a lot like that little vandal I once caught fingerpaintin' around there…" Then, in what would surely turn out to be a grievous blunder, Dick drew his revolver and trained it on the kid's forehead. "Do you know somethin' about what's goin' on!" Then, for added effect, he reached up and turned on an especially bright overhead light, directing its unforgiving glare down on the kid. "Start talkin', kid! Where were you at thirteen o'clock yesterday! Where were you on the night of the forty-third! Where does your lap go when you stand up! I want answers!" The kid immediately caved under the pressure of the interrogation and ran off. "Hey! Hey, you! Stop!" Dick commanded, almost as if he actually expected the kid to do so as he took off after him in hot pursuit. "Stop in the name of the law of gravity!"

"Law of gravity," Henry echoed as he exchanged a bemused glance with the duck. "Something tells me that fall he took earlier has psychologically scarred him for life." The duck didn't respond, just continued to suck on his thumb. "Of course," Henry went on, "that probably won't be long, now." The rest of the unusually long elevator ride passed in silence.

After a moment, the elevator finally reached its destination. "Thanks, kid!" Henry said, tousling the feathers atop the little duck's head as he stepped out into what appeared to be a small alcove in a back alley.

"Elelator go up!" the duck said, departing with the elevator as Henry got his bearings. He was in a small alcove leading just off of what looked to be an alleyway. In fact, it was the same fenced-in area he'd seen when looking over the edge from above. Either that elevator had been moving _much _slower than it appeared to have gone, or something was wrong with the dimensions in that world. Of course, given the layout of the building, the latter wouldn't be so surprising.

The chain-link fence prevented him from proceeding into the other part of the alley, but this turned out to be a good thing, considering there were a total of three of those vicious-looking pink Whiffies faces sniffing about on the other side. Henry figured that, since there was the fence separating them, it would be fun to harass them a little. "Hey!" he shouted, drawing their attention. "Hey! Lookit this!" he continued as he turned his back to them and initiated the taunting by leaning over a little and swatting himself on the backside. "You can't get me!" he jeered as the Whiffies snarled in absolute fury at his antics, and the fact that they couldn't reach him only made them that much angrier. "Nyah, nyah, nyah!" Henry continued as he turned back to face them. He started jumping from side to side right in front of the fence, now taunting them with his rapid movements and close proximity. He then backed up, laughing evilly as he proceeded with a simple taunt that requires an explanation too complex to justify, but will be given anyway. He leaned forward and held his arms outstretched before him while lifting his right foot off of the ground behind him, and proceeded to skip along like a Cactuar at a 45º angle. In case that wasn't enough, he switched feet after three skips and took three more in the other direction. Then, he stood before them with a wide stance and started pumping his arms downward like he was some sort of sumo wrestler. Finally, just for good measure, he placed his thumbs against his temples with fingers fanned out while flexing his wrists in the classic "flapping moose antlers" taunt; all this while the Whiffies on the other side continued to snarl loudly in impotent rage.

After Henry was done laughing, he approached the elevator again just as it returned to the bottom floor. He cast a brief glance upward as the doors opened, and noticed the ledge where he had boarded the elevator just above, and it wasn't nearly as high as the length of the elevator's descent. He decided he probably shouldn't get too worked up about time/space paradoxes and other such petty details and decided to just continue on his way.

When he entered the elevator, he noticed that the door on the other side was open, revealing a small recess with a ladder leading down. "I wonder what's down there?" he said as he approached. He looked down and noticed it wasn't too far to the bottom, so he did what anyone would do and descended without giving any thought as to the danger that might be waiting below.

Fortunately for him, there was none; it was just a room covered in tile, kind of like a locker room, sans lockers. The only thing that stood out in the otherwise nondescript room was a row of three narrow columns that were starting to crumble in places in the middle of the room. He assessed that there was no immediate threat, but he could, however hear yucky wet noises like those made by Mushroom Heads coming from somewhere. He headed for the corridor leading out of the room to the left when something he noticed out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. He looked, and at first he couldn't believe it, but even when he approached and examined it close up, he realized his eyes were not deceiving him. There, sitting at the base of the furthest column in all its bottled-up glory, was a Nutra-Health Drink. "Yoink!" he said as he snatched up the liquid health and proceeded drain it and toss the empty bottle away.

Now that all those bruises inflicted by that Rubber Head and Assface tag-team were little more than a mildly uncomfortable memory, he headed down the corridor, where he found the source of the wet noise to be a number of large, white stalks that looked like congealed strings of snot growing out of the floor in a manner uncannily similar to Mushroom Heads. "What the hell are these?" he wondered as he poked one with the tip of his spade. At the slightest touch, the top popped off like one of those Roman-type candles as the rest of the stalk disintegrated into a fine dust. "Awesome!" he said in response to the spectacle. He decided to call them Snot Rockets and immediately set to work clearing the path of their presence. Once that was done, he proceeded on his way down the remaining length of the corridor, at the end of which he found a ladder leading up. "I suppose I'm supposed to climb this," he said, once again showing that very little got by him as he made the short ascent.

He found himself in a winding alleyway, and he could hear the hooting of more ape-thingies just around the left-turn corner just ahead. "Time to wage some 'gorilla' warfare," he muttered under his breath, grinning at his incredibly lame pun as he tiptoed up to the corner while preparing a charge attack with his entrenching tool. When he was ready, he let out a loud war cry and dashed out from around the corner.

At least, he tried to dash, but for some reason, he was incapable of going at any speed greater than his somewhat-sneaky tiptoe while in the ready position, thus throwing away the element of surprise as the two Assfaces' attention was drawn to him by his screaming. This realization immediately killed his eagerness and saw that his obnoxious vocalizations slowly faded to awkward silence. "Dammit," he grumbled in annoyance as he continued his slow advance. One of the Assfaces came rambling in his direction on all fours like the quasi-primate it was, and once it was within range, Henry let loose his charge attack with a mighty forward thrust. The blow made contact with the designated target's head, which not only knocked the creature back, but also reduced its overall height by a good couple of inches in a most amusing manner.

The creature, apparently unaware of what had just happened to it, stood back on its legs and started feeling around atop its shoulders for its head, which wasn't there. It turned out that the force of the attack shoved its head into its thoracic cavity. "What the hell just happened!" Henry roared with laughter at the spectacle as the other Assface walked up to its decapitated partner and gave it a swift kick in the ass. The force of the blow to its hindquarters was sufficient to cause its head to pop free of its body, and by the time it had recovered its stature, the abomination was suitably pissed off enough to want to add Henry's blood to the red stains already on its body. Both immediately launched into a joint attack on Henry, but it ultimately proved useless. Henry was still laughing, and being that laughter is a natural endorphin, he was able to outlast them in the ensuing slugfest. Once the Assfaces had been dealt with, Henry had calmed down enough to proceed without laughing too much. It was a good thing nobody had been there to witness the encounter, for someone might think he was completely out of his mind in the way he was laughing himself silly while proceeding to smash two bloodied humanoids with a shovel.

He proceeded down the alleyway, noting the storefronts to what appeared to be, judging from all the signs with the kanji and stuff, restaurants specializing in foods from the Far East. As if being in a back alley wasn't a bad enough choice of location to put a damper on business, all the signs were all dingy and direly lacking in color, or anything else that would catch the eye. That and the mildew would certainly dissuade any potential patrons from partaking of the exotic cuisine. "That architect is _really _dingbatting a thousand," Henry noted as he rounded another corner…

…And stopped dead in his tracks. Not five yards down the alley, he could see the fenced-off portion where he had put on his little show, and what's more, he could see three all-too-familiar-looking pink Whiffies waiting right before it. They took notice of him and he could see from the way they snarled at him and hunkered down into an offensive stance that they were still, for the most part, pissed the hell off. "Oh boy…" he muttered, dread filling his tone as the three Whiffies charged at him. "This will undoubtedly be painful…"

And he was right. Immense discomfort would be a grossly euphemistic description of the sensation in his leg as the foremost Whiffy clamped its jaws down on it. And it didn't just bite, oh no. It kept its jaws clamped and started trying to shake him all about like a rag doll while its partners proceeded to exploit his immobility by performing their own bloodletting procedures on his free leg. Henry, in a desperate attempt to dislodge the Whiffy that was holding him in place, lifted his spade and thrust it downward, right into the Whiffie's neck. The shock from the attack caused the dog to lose its grip on him, and it fell writhing to the ground. This, of course, left him open to get bitten by the other two, which also had a tendency to not let go upon biting, so the cycle repeated itself, and by the time Henry had dispatched them, they had reduced his health gauge by about a third.

All that just because he decided to have a little fun at their expense. "Payback's a bitch," Henry said. "Literally!" He then looked down to examine the damage done, but much to his surprise, his legs had no wounds, even though he was standing in a puddle of his own blood large enough to have made him anemic in so losing. There weren't even any holes in his pants! "Hm! Must be the physical limitations of the pixilated environment!" he observed. "God bless them and their annoying powers." And with that, he followed the alley around the bend to the right and walked the remainder of its length.

He exited in a sizeable open area, and the first thing he noticed were about three Rubber Heads and an Assface running around. That is to say, they _were _running around until Henry entered the area, at which point they all stood up and directed their attention straight at him. "Aww, hell…" Henry griped as all the pseudo-simians converged on him and began to spam him with their fists.

The ape-things were really enjoying the beating they were giving him until they were all forced to jump back as their designated target began swinging the spade all around him, twirling it like he was some sort of martial arts master with a staff as a weapon. "HA!" Henry shouted triumphantly as he proceeded to keep them at bay with his swinging. "Little did you realize that _I_ am a master of hedge-clip chito: the secret, Oriental fighting art of a Japanese gardener!" He followed through with a downward overhead swing, which struck the ground before him. This caused the shovelhead to bounce off the concrete surface and hit him right in the face. This stunned him, providing the assailants with the opening they needed to all leap on him at once. A classic cartoon brawl ensued, complete with a cloud of dust obscuring the action while allowing the occasional fist and foot to pop out for a brief instant. Then, a bobble-head and an executioner came by and tossed in a few spider monkeys just for good measure.

After a moment, the brawl stopped, and when the dust cleared, there was a writhing pile of ape-creatures trying desperately to stand. While they were prone, Henry ran up from his hiding place behind a water tower on the far corner of the roof (don't ask how he pulled off that maneuver, he just did) and proceeded to kick up some more dust as he beat the pile of simians to death. Once again, the dust cleared to reveal Henry the victor, standing atop the pile of corpses as he set the shovelhead on one of the apes and drove it in with his foot. "Whew!" he said as he wiped his brow with the back of his forearm. "That was a close one!"

With that, he jumped down from the pile and proceeded on his way…all of about two yards before he was forced to stop again, for there was another Assface impeding his path to a nearby door. This wouldn't have been a problem, were it not for the fact that this particular Assface seemed to be standing guard, and it held a golf club in its left hand to use as a crowd control implement. He could see it looking at him, waiting for him to approach so it might be able to give him a good whack. Faced with this obstacle, Henry decided there was only one thing to do: he would challenge it to a duel.

He took his 5-iron out of his pocket and got into the ready position, holding the club in his left hand while holding his right behind his back. Once again, he employed his linguistic skills to issue the challenge, for not only had he mastered Dyslexic and Pig-Latin, he also had a decent grasp on Monkey as well. _"Enguarde!"_ he hooted, and the duel was on.

The Assface leapt forward and the two locked clubs, parrying back and forth as each tried to land a jab. It seemed that Henry had the upper hand and was slowly forcing his opponent back towards the door. _"You're pretty good!"_ the Assface hooted.

_"Thanks;"_ Henry replied. _"I've had a lot of time to practice since finding myself trapped in my room five days ago."_

_"Looks like you're better than I am,"_ the Assface stated.

_"Then why are you…"_ Henry hesitated, looking as closely as he could at the thing's distorted face while at the same time maintaining his offensive. _"You _are_ smiling, right?"_

_"Yes, I am."_ the Assface replied, seemingly undaunted.

_"Why's that?"_ Henry inquired.

_"Because I have a secret!"_ came the answer. Henry raised his eyebrows.

_"Oh really?"_ he said. _"And what's that?"_

_"It's something I know that you don't!"_ the ape-thing stated. Henry rolled his eyes.

_"No,"_ he groaned, _"I mean, what's the secret?"_

_"I'm not left-handed!"_ With that, the Assface switched hands on Henry, and immediately began to ward him off. Needles to say, Henry was surprised at the abrupt shift of the proverbial tides in the Assface's.

_"You're pretty good, too!"_ Henry acknowledged.

_"I should be,"_ the Assface stated. _"I'm not about to lose this job after having just landed it twenty minutes ago!"_

_"Oh, there's something I should tell you,"_ Henry announced.

_"Okay, shoot!"_ replied the Assface.

_"I would,"_ Henry said, _"but all I have is a water pistol, and I left that back in my room."_ The Assface's rubbery visage contorted like an empty mask to show an expression of mild exasperation.

_"No,"_ it hooted, _"I mean, tell me!"_ Henry's grin deepened.

_"I'm not left-handed either!"_ And with that, he switched hands on the Assface, and immediately began to regain his lost ground. All was going well for him until the Assface thrust its club and made contact with Henry right on his shirt's left breast pocket. "What the hell!" he shouted in English.

_"Touché!"_ the Assface announced. A split second later, it was knocked to the ground as a heavy metal object came crashing down on the top of its head, and Henry stepped up to it with the 5-iron in his right hand and the baseball bat in his left.

"One more thing I should tell you," he said. "I can rip off Musashi's two-swords technique!" And with that, he put the Assface out of its misery with a boot-stomp, then knelt down and proceeded to search the body of the fallen sentinel. "War trophy!" he announced as he pried the golf club out of its cold, dead fingers. Examination revealed it to be a Pitching Wedge. He didn't have one of those, so he deposited it in his pocket with the rest of his arsenal before lifting the heavy carcass he got it from. "Thanks buddy!" he grunted as he tossed the corpse onto a toppled vending machine to the side, which resulted in said machine's glass window shattering under the sheer weight of the thing's bulk. Henry immediately dashed through the door before anyone from Buffalo Rock could come out and yell at him.

He appeared to be in a large room, yet the floor he was on occupied only about half the total space. There was a series of stairs just ahead, so he used his "superior" intelligence to deduce that he was on the upper level. Of course, he wasted no time in making his descent to the bottom level, where he saw a large, multi-bladed shadow spinning around and around on the floor. When he looked up, he saw a ceiling fan hanging from support beams a couple meters above. That solved the mystery of what was casting the shadow, which led to the mystery of just _how_ it was casting the shadow in spite of a lack of an apparent light source above it. "Well, _that's_ odd…" he said.

"Yeah," another voice said. "They're usually bigger; especially the one in the school." Henry, having abruptly been made aware that he wasn't alone, immediately looked behind him and noticed another man in the room. He looked about thirty-two years old, sporting a slicked back brown hairstyle and wearing a brown leather jacket over a black shirt.

"Who the hell are you!" Henry demanded.

"I'm Harry Mason," the man replied flatly. Henry furrowed a brow.

"Harry Mason?" he echoed. "The novelist?"

"Yeah," Harry replied.

"But the news said you were killed!" Henry practically shouted. Henry just shrugged.

"Well, they were wrong then, weren't they?" he replied.

"And, uh, what're you doing here?" Henry asked.

"I'm looking for my daughter," Harry answered. A moment passed in silence. "Have you seen a little girl?" Harry finally continued after a moment. "Short? Black hair? Just turned seven last month?"

"Can't say that I have, 'cause I haven't," Henry answered. "Can't say I'm surprised she got lost, though, what with the way this place is laid out. I don't even know where the hell I am exactly! It's all disjointed and stuff, with various locations of the town haphazardly placed behind random doors."

"Hm…then maybe this _is _still Nowhere, after all…" Harry said. Henry was completely nonplussed by what was to him a generic term.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"The last notepad I looked at said this place was called Nowhere," Harry answered, "but I'm not so sure anymore. Sure, the layout's random and shows absolutely no logic on the architect's part, but…" He paused and looked around. "It doesn't look like the corridors of the Alternate hospital anymore."

"Hospital?" Henry mused. "You mean St. Germaine's?" Harry shook his head.

"No, Alchemilla," he replied. "In fact, _none _of the places here look like any I've seen in Silent Hill." Henry looked at him strangely.

"Silent Hill?" he echoed. "Is that anything like Quiet Hill? If so, you're in the wrong place. This place looks like it's been loosely based more on South Sootfield."

"Well, that explains it," Henry said. "I was wondering why this place wasn't all blood-rusted and crawling with nurses under the influence of mind-controlling parasites that hide in throbbing lumps of flesh on their upper backs."

"Eww…" Henry quailed.

"Or those little ankle-biting shadows…" Harry added. Henry gave a strange look.

"Ankle-biting shadows?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "They're kind of like those kid-looking creeps that were running around the school with butcher knives…" He gave an incredulous look. "Seriously," he continued, "you think an elementary school would have rules against kids running around with sharp objects like that! I liked the smaller shadows, the ones that went 'squeak' when you got close to them. They didn't have knives, and you could push 'em over." Henry thought about that. He had to admit, annoying kids _was _a lot of fun. Too bad the only kid around that he knew of had a tendency to kill the people who encountered him, a discovery that led Henry to resolve that he _wasn't_ going to give that particular one a hard time. Now that he thought about it, he felt it would probably be best if he moved on.

"Well, I've gotta get going," he said as he headed for the door.

"Wait," Harry called out, stopping Henry in his tracks and drawing his attention once more. "Have you seen a little girl?" Henry furrowed an eyebrow.

"No," he said. "We've already had this discussion."

"Oh, well…" Harry shrugged. "Have you seen a little girl?"

"Short? Black hair? Just turned seven last month?" Henry filled in the rest of the blanks in the routine.

"You've seen her!" Harry asked, his voice filled with renewed hope and eagerness. Henry, becoming quite annoyed with this OCD chowderhead, decided the only way to get rid of him was to give him a false lead.

"Yes, actually," he said. "I saw her and a diaper-wearing green duck playing with the elevator."

"Oh, all right. Thanks."

Henry breathed a sigh of relief and turned to be on his way. But, the moment he opened the door… "Hey!" Harry called out. "Have you seen a little girl?" Henry decided there was nothing for it, and just hurriedly shut the door behind him as he made his exit, leaving the perpetually clueless Harry Mason alone in the room.

"I guess he didn't know," Harry said to himself after a moment in silent solitude. "Nice guy, though."

--------------------

Henry heaved an exasperated sigh as he leaned on the door. "Hope I never see _him_ again…" he muttered. Anyway, he found himself atop yet another indoor fire escape, this one in a tall, narrow room and hemmed in by a chain-link fence. Being that the only way to go was down, he descended the numerous flights of stairs until he had set foot back on good ol' aged concrete. Once again, the going was straight forward from there: the only exit in the narrow chamber was on the far end. "I think I'll go thisaway," he said as he started off in that direction.

He had just about reached the door when he suddenly noticed a trashcan and numerous trash bags stuffed with refuse in the corner. Salvage came to mind again, so he immediately began rummaging through the contents of the waste receptacles. Unfortunately, he only found two things of interest one was a silver coin with the profile of an old fogey on it. "It looks like a Rubber Head…" he observed. Since he couldn't imagine any currency being minted with the likeness of a Rubber Head on it, he figured it was just a cheap novelty item and tossed it back into the trash before continuing his search. The only other thing of interest he found was a gossip magazine with an article about a guy who killed a couple of 8-year-old kids. Unfortunately, the article didn't interest him in the least, so he didn't bother to read it. Schmuck; might've found a critical lead if he'd taken the time to exercise his literacy.

Having deemed all that he'd found as being useless, Henry stashed the trash in the proper manner and decided to be on his way. Long story short, he passed through the door at the end of the chamber.

He suddenly found himself in what looked like a bar, as indicated by the counter with numerous bottles on shelves behind it. To the right of the door, there was a pool table with numerous billiard balls scattered about on its green felt surface. Beyond that, there was a Hole in the wall. There was also a soda vending machine set against the wall right next to the door. As for the walls themselves…well, the walls were completely smeared with a red substance that looked a lot like strawberry syrup, and it was crawling with numerous pink Graboidites, which explained the wet swooching noises that filled the otherwise silent atmosphere of the bar. "And me without salt…" Henry muttered. "Oh well! I have a shovel, and that'll smoosh 'em well enough!" And with that, he went about splattering the Graboidites' red innards all over the already-stained wall. Oh, how easily it is to keep a simple mind occupied…

Once he was done with the ones on that wall, he decided go about his business. He was about to start off when something on a nearby table grabbed his attention. There, in all its iron-oxidizing glory, was an axe! "_Now_ we're talkin'!" he excitedly declared as he took it up in his hand and examined it. The cutting edge of the axe head was looking a mite dull. "Should be able to make up for the dull edge with brute force," he rationalized. "Not only will that make it hurt more, but the rust will likely insure that anything surviving a blow from it will at least get tetanus!" With a nod, he decided the weapon was a keeper. "Not exactly a Type-3 heat hawk," he said as he gave it a few practice swings, "but I think this'll do just fine!"

He immediately decided to test out his new weapon and went over to the wall with the Hole in it, where there were more Graboidites feeding on strawberry syrup. Unfortunately, Henry had terrible aim when it came to hitting Graboidites with anything that didn't have a broad surface like his spade, so all he was able to accomplish was knock them all onto the floor. "Uuuurrrgh! Screw you all to hell!" he cursed as he stomped them flat. Now that there was nothing left to kill, he decided to be on his way.

He approached the door just to the left of where the Graboidites had been feeding and tried to open it, but found it was locked. Closer examination revealed a keypad above the lock. "Hm," he said. "This particular lock conforms to the uniform numerical arrangement for numerical keypads; not like that piece-o' in the prison." Of course, if there was a keypad, there had to be a clue to the combo somewhere. But where? "Hmm…where would _I _hide a lock combination?" After about five minutes of thought, he finally remembered exactly where he would leave it: out in the open where anyone could find it.

He went over to the bar, and what should he find but a slip of paper with a message on it. It read thusly:

_The boss said that the so-called "secret" number this time is the last 4 digits of the bar's phone number. I question the wisdom in this plan, considering the number is written right there on the sign on the roof, where any idiot can see it from South Sootfield Street! He might as well have a combination of 1-2-3-4-5 on his luggage!_

"South Sootfield Street!" Henry exclaimed. "My room's window faces South Sootfield Street!" So without a moment's hesitation, he stuffed the memo into his pocket, got a running start and made a flying leap into the Hole.

--------------------

Henry woke up, jumped out of bed and dashed over to the window. Upon looking out, he saw a billboard advertising _Bar Northfield_ on the roof of a building just across the street. The number was 555-3750. "Got it!" Henry said.

No sooner had he said that than what looked like a disembodied human head slowly fell past his window. "I ain't got no body, ya know what I'm sayin?" it said, then proceeded to laugh at its own dull, wise-ass comment as it continued its slow plummet towards the ground, leaving a very confused Henry to look down after it.

"What the hell…?" he said. After a moment, he just shrugged it off.

After stuffing the memo from the bar into his scrapbook, he went over to the telephone on his nightstand. "I think I'll call that number just for the hell of it," he said as he picked up the receiver and dialed in the number. No sooner had he done so than his ear was bombarded by some of the most ear-tweaking white noise he'd ever heard. "Ugh, damn!" he winced, pressing his hand against the offended ear as he put the receiver back down. "What the hell was _that_ all about?" He stood up and shook the effects of the noise from his head as he exited his bedroom.

As soon as he stepped out into the hallway, Henry heard someone knocking at the door. "Okay, let's see who it is _this_ time," he said as he made his way out to his living room. From there…aww, forget it! You know where he went from there!

He looked through the peephole, almost expecting to find yet another curious tenant who was blissfully oblivious to his plight, but instead was greeted by the unobstructed sight of the far wall with a message scrawled out over all the handprints.

_BETTER CHECK ON YOUR  
__NEIGHBOR SOON!_

"Uh…okay," Henry shrugged as he made his way over to the hole in the wall. When he peered through, he saw Irene blathering away like ladies tend to do on the telephone.

"Really? That many people? You think you can handle a mob like that?" she said. "…Oh ya don't say? – Huh? Oh, sure, no sweat. I'd better start making myself presentable soon. – I told you some 2.3 skillion times, I'll be there. – What? Oh, that. – Boy, I'll say… I'd better blow this joint soon. There's just – gee, idunno, something about this place that doesn't set right with me, and it's not just the loony neighbors…"

"Seems to be doing just fine," Henry said as he stood back up and started back across the living room. He'd just made it as far as the hallway when the knocking on his door returned, only now it was loud and more impatient. "What _now_?" he griped as he made his way back over to the door and looked through the peephole. Strangely enough, the writing had changed.

_WRONG NEIGHBOR,  
__DUMB-ASS!_

"Wrong neighbor?" Henry read aloud before backing away from the door. He gave it some thought, but ultimately drew a blank, so he just dismissed it with a shrug and returned to his bathroom, where he – yup, you guessed it – went back through the Hole.

--------------------

Henry was back in the bar, and he immediately entered the numbers into the keypad. "That was easy," he said as he opened the door and stepped out and shut the door behind him.

He found himself on a walkway hugging the walls of a large, square shaft. It was like a stairwell, with the stairwell alternating between steps and landings at each directional change. As it was, he was on one of the landings, and the stairs leading down seemed to have collapsed, so up was the only way to go. "It _would_ be that way…" he muttered under his breath as he started off.

"UWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The loud, obnoxious vocalization echoed off the walls of the shaft, drawing Henry's attention upward towards its source.

"What the hell was that!" he said, but he couldn't see what it was. All he could see was the shaft extending ever upward. "Aww, dammit," he griped. "I'm gonna have to climb all the way up _there_?"

"Sucks to be you!" a familiar voice said, drawing Henry's attention to a familiar so-and-so.

"You again!" Henry shouted.

"Yep, me!" the ghost in the green shirt said from the other side of the shaft. "You know, it's at times like these that the ability to defy gravity has its pros. For instance: I don't have to climb all these tiresome stairs to get to the top. I can just levitate!"

"Good for you," Henry replied tersely. "So why don't you go on ahead?"

"Because then I wouldn't be able to pester you the entire way!" the ghost said with malicious glee as it floated over to its intended target.

"Dammit!" Henry cursed as he started off at a run. All while making the tiresome ascent, the ghost just wouldn't stop annoying him with his mindless chatter and inane questions.

"Are we there yet?"

"No!"

"How far is it?"

"Shuddap!"

"Are you getting tired yet?"

"Go away!"

"You know what this reminds me of?"

"I don't really give a crap!"

"It reminds me of a story about a small rebel group trying to save the world. There was this one point where they had to infiltrate the headquarters of the corrupt, multinational conglomerate that was oppressing everyone and…"

And so it went for the duration of the journey upward. By the time Henry made it to the final landing, he was more than out of breath. "Whew!" he said between breaths. "I think…that should be…enough exercise…for one year…" He then looked over and saw his traveling companion clutching his head. "What's the matter?" he said. "Altitude gettin' to ya?"

"My head hurts…" he said. "Man, this sucks! Aaaaaaghhh…" The ghost finally succumbed to the pressure in his head and lost the ability to levitate, and since he was levitating in the middle of the shaft, he had nothing underneath him except the very bottom.

"Looks like you got 'shafted'!" Henry shouted to him.

"Screw yoooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!" the ghost shouted back from the depths as he continued his rapid descent.

"Well," Henry said, patting his shirt pocket, "thank God for countermeasures!" With that, he proceeded along the remaining length of the landing until he reached the end, where he found a door with brass numbers fixed on it. "Room 207?" he read aloud. "But that's Dick's room number; what's it doing…here…?" He trailed off as he noticed a placard hanging on the door beneath the numbers. "Uh-oh," he said, "either this is an ultra-compact map to the Valley of the Jedi, or Dick just got proverbially F'ed in the A'." Not wasting any time, Henry took the placard, deposited it in his pocket, and opened the door.

"Break yo'se'f, foo'!" a voice said from behind just as Henry was about to enter. He wheeled around and found yet another familiar figure.

"Not you too…!" he whined and buried his face in his palm.

"I _got_ yo' ass!" the imitation-gangsta's ghost hovered over to his position.

"Is there something you want?" Henry demanded with strained patience.

"Yo, who be dat mutha laid out at the bottom dere like a prison bitch?" Henry gave a start.

"You mean, you just got here from the bottom?" he asked.

"Damn straight!" was the answer. Henry couldn't believe it.

"You got up here _that _fast? And you don't even feel lightheaded or otherwise uncomfortable?"

"Fuck dat shit!" the ghost said. "I _likes _to get high!" He nudged Henry with his elbow. "Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Well, you're high enough," Henry answered, looking down the shaft. "Damn, that was fast!" It suddenly occurred to him. "Oh, I get it," he said. "Let me guess. Speed?"

"Nope! Weed!" The ghost emphasized by holding an imaginary joint up to his mouth and taking two audible tokes in rapid succession. "Dat be some damn good shit right dere!"

"So, are your senses suitably dulled?" Henry asked as he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the baseball bat. "Because I'm gonna give you a red-ass beatdown!" He then swung and struck the hood right in the face.

"Damn, yo, don't be gettin' all GTA on me!" the ghost protested, and Henry responded by hitting him again. "Bitch, I'll kick yo ass!" Henry hit him again and continued to beat him senseless until the hoodlum was laid out flat on the platform, at which point he finished the job with his feet.

Once Henry had finished doing the L.A. Shuffle on the ghost's head, he suddenly remembered. "Oh, that's right!" Without further delay, he dashed through the door.

Inside, he found Dick, but instead of finding him murdered in some cruel manner, he found him very much alive and enjoying himself in one of those vibro-massage recliners.

"Th-i-i-i-s-s-s f-f-e-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-s-s _g-o-o-o-o-o-d_!" he said, his voice affected by the vibrations as they soothed away the aches and pains he'd sustained while fighting off Rubber Heads.

"Dick!" Henry shouted. "Get out of the chair! Quick!" He dashed over and grabbed his neighbor by the wrist in an attempt to forcibly pull him out of the chair. However, he failed to realize that he'd built up quite a static charge from the gangsta ghost's ski cap, and since the door was already open, he didn't need to touch the doorknob, thus bypassing the shock until he grabbed Dick by the wrist. There was an audible pop as the two sustained a massive shock of static, at which both reflexively recoiled their hands. Dick reacted by drawing his gun.

"W-w-w-w-…" he started, then paused just long enough to shut off the chair. Then he began to shout. "What the hell are you doing!" he yelled, his revolver trained on Henry.

"Dick, you gotta get outta here!" Henry shouted. "He's gonna kill you!"

"Oh yeah! Well, let him try!" Dick retorted, waving his revolver. "He'll regret having come anywhere _near _me!" He then set the gun in his lap and reached over to pick up a gun magazine from the floor beside the chair. "Like they say, a man's home is his fortress!" he added as he turned the chair back on and opened the magazine. As soon as he started reading, the magazine cover fell off to reveal that it wasn't really a gun magazine, but a porno magazine. Dick, caught off-guard by the eyeful he received, immediately suffered a terminal nosebleed that gushed forth in torrents, draining him in roughly three seconds. The only reason Henry's clothes weren't permanently stained with Dick's hemoglobin was the physical limitations of the pixilated environment.

Henry then noticed that the kid was in the room, standing just off the recliner's left flank with arm outstretched as he pointed at something out the window. He didn't have time to contemplate what the whole thing meant before Dick spoke again.

"A…a…a…a…a…k…k…k…'kid'…?" he stuttered from the vibrations, the last drops of blood oozing into his mouth from his nostrils. Henry looked back at him, and noticed the number 19121 had suddenly appeared on his forehead. "Th…th…th…th…that's n…n…no kid… It's…th…the ZIP code m…m…man…" The last thing Henry saw was Dick's head rolling back, falling lifeless onto the chair's backrest.  
--------------------

**Hell Count:** 11  
**Total Hell Count:** 71

**A/N:** Wow, twelve pages! Once again, the obsessive-compulsive Harry Mason is property of Hometown.


End file.
